TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 793 



logical interest are usually difficult to procure and to keep, and require the use 

 of special and complicated methods for their satisfactory examination, while skulls 

 of the leading races of mankind are readily collected, preserved, and studied. 

 Hence it follows tliat the crania in our anthropological collections are as numerous, 

 well preserved, and \ aried as the hrains are few in number and defective, both iu 

 their state of preservation and representative character. It may reasonably he 

 anticipated that improved methods of preservation and the growing recognition on 

 the part of anthropologists, museum curators, and collectors o( the importance ot 

 a study of the brahi itself will to some extent at least remedy these defects ; but so 

 far as prehistoric man is concerned, we can never hope to have any direct evidence 

 of the condition of his higher nerve centres, and must depend for an estimate of his 

 cerebral development upon those more or less perfect skulls which fortunately have 

 resisted for so many ages the corroding hand of time. 



I presume we will all admit that the main value of a good collection of human 

 skulls depends upon the light which they can be made to throw upon the relative 

 development of the brains of different races. Such collections possess few, if any, 

 brains taken from these or corresponding skulls, and we are thus dependent upon 

 the study of the skulls alone for an estimate of brain development. 



Vigorous attacks have not unfrequently been made upon the craniometric 

 systems at present in general use, and the elaborate tables, compiled with so much 

 trouble, giving the circumference, diameters, and corresponding indices of various 

 parts of the skull, are held to afford hut little information as to the real nature of 

 skull variations, however useful they may be for purposes of classification. AVhQe 

 by no means prepared to express entire agreement with these critics, 1 must admit 

 that craniologists as a whole have concentrated their attention mainly on the ex- 

 ternal contour of the skull, and have paid comparatively little attention to the 

 form of the cranial cavity. The outer surface of the cranium presents features which 

 are due to other factors than brain development, and an examination of the cranial 

 cavity not only gives us important information as to brain form, but by affording 

 a comparison between the external and internal surfaces of the cranial wall it gives 

 a valuable clue to the real significance of the external configuration. Beyond 

 determining its capacity we can do but little towards an exact investigation of 

 the cranial cavity without making a section of the skull. I'orty years ago Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, in his work ' On the Evidence of Man's Place in Nature,' showed the 

 importance of a comparison of the basal with the vaulted portion of the skiill, aiid 

 maintained that until it should become ' an opprobrium to an ethnological collec- 

 tion to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinally ' there would be 

 ' no safe basis for that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the anatomical 

 characters of the crania of the difl'erent races of mankind.' Professor Cleland and 

 Sir William Turner have also insisted upon this method of examination, and only 

 two years ago Professor D. J. Cunningham, in his Presidential Address to this 

 Section, quoted, with approval, the forcible language of Huxley. The curators of 

 craniological collections appear, however, to possess an invincible objection to any 

 such treatment of the specimens under their care. Even in the Hunterian Museum 

 in London, where Huxley himself worked at this subject, among several thousands 

 of skulls, scarcely any have been bisected longitudinally, or had the cranial cavity 

 exposed by a section in any other direction. The method advocated so strongly 

 by Huxley is not only essential to a thorough study of the relations of basi-cranial 

 axis to the vault of the cranium and to the facial portion of the skull, but also 

 permits of casts being taken of the cranial cavity ; a procedure which, I would 

 venture to suggest, has been too much neglected by craniologists. 



Every student of anatomy is familiar with the finger-like depressions on the 

 inner surface of the cranial wall, which are described as the impress of the cerebral 

 convolutions; but their exact distribution and the degree to which they are de- 

 veloped according to age, sex, race, &c. still remain to be definitely determined. 

 Indeed, there appears to be a considerable difference of opinion as to the degree of 

 approximation of the outer surface of the brain to the inner surface of the cranial 

 wall. Thus the brain is frequently described as lying upon a water-bed, or as 

 swimjviiug in the oerebro-spinal fluids while Hyrtle speaks of^this fluid as ft 



