HRDLICKA] SKELETAL REMAINS 25 
COMPARISONS 
A study of the Calaveras skull as compared with other crania, 
particularly with those of California Indians, has been made by 
Dr. Jeffreys Wyman and Dr. George A. Dorsey. Doctor Wyman’s 
conclusions are that—* 
(1) The skull presents no signs of having belonged to an inferior race. In 
its breadth it agrees with the other crania from California, except those of the 
Diggers, but surpasses them in the other particulars in which comparisons haye 
been made. This is especially obvious in the greater prominence of the fore- 
head and the capacity of its chamber. (2) In so far as it differs in dimensions 
from the other crania from California, it approaches the Esquimaux. 
In this report there are two points to which exception must be 
taken. The skull lacks both parietals and one whole temporal; there- 
fore a measurement of its breadth (given by Wyman as 15 em.) 
is impossible, and even an approximation to it must remain uncertain; 
and there is absolutely nothing about the specimen which approaches 
the high and narrow-nosed, broad and flat-faced, and narrow, keel- 
vaulted Eskimo. Doctor Dorsey’s account’ is more circumstantial, 
but unfortunately is based on a comparison of the Calaveras skull as 
known from Whitney’s account and measurements, including the 
shghtly misleading illustrations, and not from the specimen itself, 
with a skull of a Digger Indian from Calaveras county. Doctor 
Dorsey recognizes the skull as that of a male, and in summarizing 
states that— 
While the comparison of an actual skull with the drawings of a fragment 
of another must be unsatisfactory, yet the conclusion is necessary that the 
two skulls have the same general features and may easily be pronounced of 
one and the same type. 
The National Museum collection includes two crania and some 
fragments of skulls from caves in Calaveras county, collected and 
donated in 1857 by J. S. Hittell, of San Francisco. All these speci- 
mens had, and most of them still retain, inside and outside, a coating 
of grayish calcareous, stalagmitic deposit, much like that which 
partially covers the Calaveras skull; in fact, on fracture, the deposit 
in the two cases, so far as the unaided eye can perceive, is identical in 
character. None of the cave skulls or fragments show any adhesion 
of gravel. Both the entire specimens are male adult skulls, but one 
(cat. no. 225171) does not appear entirely normal, and its orbits are 
affected in form and size by very heavy supraorbital ridges, so that 
only one of the specimens (cat. no. 225172) appears fit for comparison 
with the Calaveras skull. It is a mesocephalic cranium (cephalic 
index 75.5) of moderate height (basion-bregma 13.6 cm.) and general 
good development; it belonged to a person of about fifty-five years of 
“J. 7). Whitney, Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada, 273, Cambridge, Mass., 1879. 
>In William H. Holmes’s Review of the Evidence relating to Auriferous Gravel Man in: 
California, Smithsonian Report for 1899, 465-466, Washington, 1901. 
