464 ON THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE BUSHMEN. 



a little enhanced when we consider a second fact, drawn from a 

 wholly alien line of contemplation, that, namely, which shows us 

 that teleological adaptation to special needs, or necessities rather, 

 as to dealing with food, has nothing to do with it. The fact of six 

 lower jaws all alike exhibiting this striking peculiarity, which may 

 be shortly described by saying that it resembles the conformation 

 seen in the Gibbon, whilst the larger anthropoid apes show the 

 coronoid developed into a prominence which comes much more 

 nearly into resemblance with that usual in our own species, is to 

 my mind very strong evidence to the effect that we have here six 

 Bushman jaws before us. In all of these lower jaws we find the 

 angle roughened and projecting outwards in correspondence with 

 the insertion of fibres of the masseter, and thereby giving a greater 

 width to the lower portion of the face ; whilst, internally, the 

 surface below the inferior dental foramen is remarkably concave, 

 owing in some cases to a general though slight inversion of the 

 lower portion of the ramus, and in others to a thinning of the 

 bone in the region between the alveolar process, in the region 

 of the last molar, and the angle thickened at once by the insertions 

 of the masseter and of the pterygoid. Of the four skulls one only 

 fails to find a lower jaw which will in any way admit of coadaptation 

 to it, and this skull being exaggeratedly dolichocephalous as well 

 as of much larger size and proportions than the other three, may 

 very well be supposed to have belonged to one of the attacking and 

 not to one of the attacked tribe; for I apprehend that in massacres, 

 at least of Bushmen, the killing is not usually all on one side. 

 The * reports,' indeed, both of their enemies and of their friends, 

 assure us that a Bushman at bay is a foe by no means to be 

 despised, and that, though little, he is fierce. And I can say for 

 those three crania that their tout ensemble, as compared with that 

 of Abantu skulls placed alongside of them, impresses me with the 

 same kind of feeling which after detailed measurements I have felt 

 in comparing the crania of Lapps with those of races such as the 

 Finns living close to them. They appear to me, in fact, to indicate 

 that their owners were of a smaller race than the owners of the 

 skulls beside them, though the Bushman is not always a mere dwarf, 

 as is sometimes stated. The feebleness of the two humeri, and 

 even more notably of the fragment of ulna, and the small size of 

 the cervical vertebrae and of one of the two scapulae accompanying 



