12 CORPOREAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN. 



brain than the house-dog, and the porpoise than the orang 

 utan. q 



- As the human brain is of such great comparative magnitude, 

 the cranium is necessarily very large and bears a greater pro- 

 portion to the face than in any other animal. In an European the 

 vertical section of the cranium is almost four times larger than 

 that of the face (not including the lower jaw) ; in the monkey it is 

 little more than double ; in most ferae, nearly equal ; in the glires, 

 solipedes, pecora, and belluae, less. The faculties, however, do 

 not depend upon this proportion, because men of great genius, as 

 Leo, Montaigne, Leibnitz, Haller, and Mirabeau. had very large 

 faces, and the sloth and seal have faces larger than the stag, 

 horse, and ox, in proportion to the brain, and the proportion is 

 acknowledged by Cuvier to be not at all applicable to birds. We 

 are assisted in discovering the proportion between the cranium 

 and face by the facial angle of Camper. He draws two straight 

 lines, the one, horizontal, passing through the external meatus 

 auditorius and the bottom of the nostrils ; the other, more per- 

 pendicular, running from the convexity of the forehead to the 

 most prominent part of the upper jaw. The angle which the 

 latter, the proper facial line, makes with the former, is greatest 

 in the human subject, from the comparative smallness of the brain 

 and the great developement of the mouth and nose in brutes. In 

 the human adult this angle is about from 65 to 85 ; in the orang 

 utan about from 55 to 65; in some quadrupeds 20; and in the 

 lower classes of vertebral animals it entirely disappears. 



Neither is it to be regarded as an exact measure of the under- 

 standing, for persons of great intellect may have a prominent 

 mouth; it shows merely the projection of the forehead, while the 

 cranium and brain may vary greatly in the size of other parts ; three- 

 fourths of quadrupeds, whose crania differ extremely in other re- 

 spects, have the same facial angle ; great amplitude of the frontal 

 sinuses, as in the owl and hog, without any increase of brain, may 

 increase it, and for this reason Cuvier draws the facial line from 

 the internal table of the frontal bone. 



In proportion as the face is elongated, the occipital foramen 

 lies more posteriorly; in man consequently it is most forward. 

 While in man it is nearly in the centre of the base of the cra- 

 nium, and horizontal, and has even sometimes its anterior margin 



i See Gall, 1. c, t. ii. p. 281. sqq. 



