472 ON THE CKANIOLOGY OF THE BUSHMEN. 



race as possessing well-defined limits. Or lovers of logical con- 

 sistencj', who may not be extensively acquainted with the width 

 over which variability may extend itself, may prefer to suggest 

 that some kind of error may attach or have been attached to the 

 identification of this particular cranium. It is possible, I suppose, 

 that a runaway Caffre, or even an outcast white man, may have 

 betaken himself to some horde of Bushmen, and identified himself 

 with their manners and customs, and adopted their dress and 

 equipment. Such voluntary degradations are known to have taken 

 place, with the consequence of the refugee becoming not merely 

 1 half a savage,' but rather, as shown by the place and precedence 

 given to him, ■ a savage and a half; ' or, finally, the owner of this 

 skull may really have been a cross between a white man and a 

 female of the Bushman stock. To this last explanation I myself 

 incline. 



As regards the condition of the teeth, the skull presented by 

 Mr. Fairclough, though referred by me to a man in the middle 

 period of life, has only some seven or eight teeth, comparatively little 

 worn, left in situ ; the rest having been lost, and traces of two or 

 three large alveolar abscesses and great absorption elsewhere of the 

 alveolar processes are very evident. Alveolar abscesses have simi- 

 larly left their traces in the skull presented by Dr. Bleek, in which, 

 however, the teeth have been very much worn down, though only 

 one or two have been lost during life. The skull presented by 

 Mr. Dunsterville had lost all its teeth, save the two central incisors, 

 during life, and the alveolar processes have suffered a very large 

 amount of absorption in this senile skull. 



Of the entire series, as the figures giving the length of the 

 circumference and the cubic capacity show most plainly, we can 

 predicate smallness ; the average of the latter measurement being 

 but 1285 as against 1485 cub. cent, obtained by Professor Flower 

 for the cubage of seven Caffres and Zulus, and, indeed, as 

 against 1330 from his measurement of his available Bushman 

 crania. 



With this small capacity is combined, which is by no means 

 always the case in crania of races low in the scale of human life, 

 a short basi-cranial axis, with an average length of no more than 

 93 millimetres. 



In none of these six skulls is the patency of the frontal suture, 



