150 REPORT — 1875. 



modern European skulls ; and secondly, that the female skulls of those times did 

 not contrast to that disadvantage with the skuUs of their male contemporaries 

 ■which the average female skulls of modern days do, when subjected to a similar 

 comparison *. Dr. Thurnam demonstrated the former of these facts, as regards 

 the skulls from the Long and the Round Barrows of Wiltshire, in the Memoirs of 

 the London Anthropological Society for I860 ; and the names of Les Eyzies and 

 Cro-Magnon, and of the Caverne de I'Homme JMort, to which we may add that of 

 Solutre, remind us that the first of these facts has been confirmed, and the second 

 both indicated and abundantly commented upon by M. Broca. 



The impression which these facts make upon one, when one first comes to realize 

 them, is closely similar to that which is made by the first realization to the mind of 

 the existence of a subtropical Flora in Greenland in Miocene times. All our antici- 

 pations are precisely reversed, and in each case by a weight of demonstration 

 equivalent to such a work ; there is no possibility in either case of any mistake ; 

 a!ul we acknowledge that all that we had expected is absent, and that where we 

 had looked for poverty aud pinching there we come upon luxurious and exuberant 

 growth. The comparisons we draw in either case between the past and the present 

 are not wholly to the advantnge of the latter : still such are the facts. Philologists 

 will thank me for reminding them of Mr. Chauucy AVrighfs brilliant suggestions 

 that the large relative size of brain to body which distinguishes, aud always, so far 

 as we know, has distinguished the human species as compared with the species most 

 nearly related to it, may be explained by the psychological tenet that the smallest 

 proficiency in the faculty of language may " require more brain power than the 

 greatest in any other direction," aud that " we do not Jiuow and have no means 

 of knowing what is the quantity of intellectual power as measured by brains wliich 

 even the simplest use of language reqvdres " t- 



And for the explanation of the preeminently large size of the brains of these 

 particular representatives of om species, the tenants of prehistoric sepulchres, wo 

 have to bear in mind, first, that they were, as the smalluer;s of their nimibers and 

 the largeness of the tumuli lodging them may be taken to prove, the chiefs of their 

 tribes; and, secondly, that modern savages have been known, and prehistoric 

 savages may therefore be supposed, to have occasionally elected their chiefs to their 

 chieftainships upon gronuds furnished by their superior fitness for such posts— that 

 is to sav, for their superior energy aud ability. Some persons may find it difllcidt 

 to belieVe this, though such facts are deposed to by most tlioroughly trustworthy 

 travellers, such as Baron Osten Sacken (referred to by Von Baer, in the Report of 

 the famous Anthropological Congress at Gottingen in 18G1, p. 22). And they 

 may object to accepting it, for, among other reasons, this reason — to wit, that 

 Jlr. Galton has shown us in his ' Slen of Science, their Nature and Nm-ture,' p. 98, 

 that men of great energy aud activity (that is to say, just the very men fitted to act 

 as leaders of and to commend themselves to savages)! ha-^e ordinnrly smaller-sized 

 heads than men possessed of intellectual power dissociated from those qualities. 



The objection I specif}-, as well as those which I allude to, may have too nmch 

 weight assigned to them ; but we cau waive this discussion and put our feet on 

 firm ground when we say that in all savage communities the chiefs have a larger 

 share of food and other comforts, such as there are in savage life, and have con- 

 sequently better and larger frames — or, as the Rev. S. A^'hitmee puts it (/. c), when 

 observing on the fact as noticed by him in Polynesia, a more " portly bearing." 

 This (which, as the size of the brain increases witliin certain proportions with the 

 increase of the size of the body, is a material fact in eveiy sense) has been testified 



* The subequality of the male and female skulls in the less civilized of modem races 

 was pointed out as long ago as 1845, by Eetzius in Miiller's ' Archiv,' p. 89, and was com- 

 mented upon by Huschke, of Jena, in his 'Schadel, Hirn uiid Scele,' pj). 48-51, in 1854. 



t The biblio'gi'apher will thank me also for poiutiiig out to him that the important 

 paper in the 'North-American Eevicw,' for October, for 1870, p. 295, frcm which I 

 have just quoted, has actually escaped the wonderfully exhaustive research of Dr. 8eid- 

 litz (see his ' Darwin'sclie Tbeorie,' 1875). 



t An interesting and instructive story in illustration of the kind of qualities which 

 do recommend a man to savages, is told us by Sir Bartle Frere in his pamphlet, 

 « Christianity suited to all forms of Civilization,' pp. 12-14. 



