ON THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE BUSHMEN. 471 



Professor Flower has phrased it at p. 255, I.e., the Bushman cranium 

 is ' mesaticephalic,' 'orthognathous' (or, at least, mesognathous, my 

 average being 98, which is ' mesognathous,' as against Professor 

 Flower's 97-8, which is just below the limits of mesognathy), ' pla- 

 tyrrhine,' ' microseme,' and ' microcephalic' 



By a comparison of my measurements, not with those of 

 Professor Flower, but with my own records of the history of each 

 skull, an even more surprising and more important fact, in the way, 

 however, not of coincidence but of the reverse, is brought to light. 

 The most aberrant of the six in the matter of measurements is the 

 very skull about the authenticity of which there is the most perfect 

 certainty. This is the skull presented by Mr. Fairclough, with 

 which were sent the articles specified above, as characteristic 

 of the Bushman race. But the skul] itself is, in almost every 

 important particular, different from the five other crania here 

 measured with it. Its circumference and cubical capacity, its 

 length, breadth, and height, and their indices, its orbital and nasal 

 indices, are all alike aberrant from the average. It certainly would 

 not have entered into the head of any craniographer to refer this 

 skull to the Bushman variety of our species, unless he had been 

 informed of the character of its accompaniments. A morphological 

 point which might have served to indicate the character of its 

 owner — I mean the feebleness of the nasal spine, a shortcoming 

 more or less evident in all, or nearly all, Bushman crania — does not 

 help us here; for we observe in this skull that the line of sym- 

 physis of the two halves of the upper jaw rises here anteriorly, as it 

 does sometimes in European jaws, into a raised double ridge, which, 

 though it slopes gradually into the plane of the alveolar border, 

 and does not rise into a sharply-defined angular spine, and so far 

 falls short of the typical 'anterior nasal spine,' is yet a very 

 different thing from the very feebly-developed bifid process of 

 ordinary Bushmen, and many other African and other savage 

 jaws. 



The question arises, how are we to interpret these facts ? We 

 may explain them by saying that the elasticity and plasticity of 

 the type is such as to admit of the escape of an exceedingly aber- 

 rant individual, and its homogeneity and plasticity nevertheless 

 also such as to allow of its walls joining again, and restoring the 

 perfect circumscription which is implied in our speaking of the 



