ON THE CRANIOLOGY OP THE BUSHMEN. 467 



has a cephalic index of -81, being equal to that of the Negro girl 

 just mentioned in the College of Surgeons' Museum; and though 

 one of the six has but .70 for its cephalic index, still the average of 

 the six is as much as -J5, and Professor Flower's six give us an 

 average of .768 as against one of -731 for the circumambient { Zulus 

 and Kaffirs/ and against one of .7 36 for 'African Negroes of 

 various tribes.' 



The altitudinal index is as significant as, if not more significant 

 than, the latitudinal; and the tapeinocephalic or platycephalic 

 character of the Bushman as compared with the two other as- 

 semblages of Africans just mentioned, is expressed by the figures 

 'J 16 3 as against altitudinal indices for them of 741 and ^735 re- 

 spectively. The average of the altitudinal indices of my six Bush- 

 man crania is -72, the height exceeding the breadth in two cases 

 only, and in each of them by one-tenth of an inch only. 



As important a question to ask about a skull as either of the two 

 relating to the two indices just mentioned, is, to my thinking, the 

 question, does the cranium when resting, in the absence of its lower 

 jaw, with the grinding surfaces of its teeth on a flat surface, touch 

 that surface posteriorly with its occipital condyles, or with its 

 inferior occipital squamae ? Accordingly as the former or the 

 latter portions of the occipital bone give support posteriorly to a 

 skull so placed, is the cranial curvature lesser or greater, and with 

 it the antero-posterior arc described by the brain it contains. Tried 

 by this test, first suggested by Prof. Ecker (' Archiv fur Anthrop.' 

 iv. 1870, p. 288), the six Bushman crania in the museum whence 

 I write have four of their number resting on the occipital squamae, 

 as opposed to two which show the lesser curvature. I incline 

 to think that this is a higher average than West Coast Negro 

 crania would show, but Abantu skulls are very frequently so well 

 developed as to have a considerable interval left between their occi- 

 pital condyles and a flat surface, touching anteriorly the grinding 

 surface of their teeth, and posteriorly their conceptacula cerebelli. 



Another important point given us in that most instructive of 

 normae, the norma lateralis, is that of the junction or non-junction of 

 the squamous to the frontal. This question is easily answered, as in 

 no single one of my six Bushman crania does the squamous approxi- 

 mate itself at all more closely to the frontal than it would do in an 

 equal number of European crania. Indeed, in all but one of these 



Hh2 



