#06 B1MANA. 



observes, is visible through the thin external table : the styloid process 

 of the temporal bone, also, is entirely wanting in the Simiae. It exists 

 in the Negro, as well as in the European. These important differences 

 may readily be distinguished in figs. 178 and 179, which represent the 

 base of the human skull, and of the Orang. 



It has been observed, by Professor Owen, that, in some skulls of 

 Negroes, and in one of an Australian savage, he found the sphenoid bone 

 not impinging on the parietal at its lower anterior angle, as it does in the 

 skulls of Europeans ; and that, in this respect, they agreed with the skull 

 of the Chimpanzee, but not of the Orang. This trifling variation does 

 not affect either the form or volume of the cranium : and, besides, it is not 

 a constant character in the Negro, nor even in the Chimpanzee. 



The great density of the Negro's skull has been noticed by Paaw, 

 Soemmerring, and other naturalists ; but it is not peculiar to the Negro 

 race : in most savage nations the skull is thicker and harder than among 

 civilized races : the ancient Egyptians also were remarkable for the 

 density of the cranium.* 



The thickness of the skull of the Negro indicates neither intellectual 

 inferiority nor structural approximation to the Orang or Chimpanzee : 

 in fact, though the crania of the various races of mankind may vary, as 

 compared with each other, throughout an almost unlimited series of 

 minor details, they preserve inviolate their great characteristics of dis- 

 tinction : no intermediate condition is discoverable among them, no half- 

 human half-simian form, indicative of the " Homo ferus, tetrapus, mutus, 

 et hirsutus," the Caliban of science, the link which binds Man to the 

 arboreal Quadrumana. 



It is obvious that skulls, distorted by art from their natural form, 

 cannot be taken into account : such, for example, as the skulls of the 

 flat-headed Indians, and other tribes of America, which owe their un- 

 natural configuration to long-continued pressure, commenced immedi- 

 ately after birth ; or the skulls of an ancient Peruvian race, found in the 

 sepulchres occurring in the great alpine valley of Titicaca ; which, though 

 Mr. Pentland attributes their singular contour to nature, and not to art, 

 have been, it cannot be doubted, subjected to the same treatment as is 



* Herodotus (Thalia), who examined the bones of the Egyptians and Persians slain in one of 

 the battles between the former and Cambyses, and which were separated from each other, those of 

 the Persians lying in one place, and : those of the Egyptians in another, says, " I found the skulls 

 of the Persians so weak, that one might break them with the least pebble ; whereas those of the 

 Egyptians were hard enough to resist the percussion of a weighty stone. They told me, and I 

 assented to their experience, that [this difference is owing to the Egyptian custom of shaving the 

 heads of their children early ; by which means the bone is rendered thicker and stronger, through 

 the heat of the sun, and the head preserved from baldness ; and, indeed, we see fewer persons bald 

 in Egypt than in any other country. As, therefore, the skull of the Egyptian is fortified by this 

 method, so the heads of the Persians are softened by a contrary custom ; for ]they are not exposed to 

 the sun, but always covered with caps and turbans. And I observed the same thing at Papremis, in 

 those who were defeated with Achaemenes, the son of Darius, by Inarus, King of Lybia. " 



