153 - iiEPORT — 1875. 



the large size of ancient skulls by suggesting that they contained brains of this 

 negative character. And I am glad to see that M. Broca is emphatically of this 

 opinion, and that, after a judicious statement of the whole case, he expresses himself 

 thus (Revue d'Anthropologie, ii. 1, 38) : — " Rien ne permet done de supposer que 

 les rapports de la masse encephalique avec I'intelligence fussent autres chez eux que 

 chez nous." 



It is by a reference to the greater severity of the struggle for existence and to tlie 

 lesser degree to which the principle of division of labour was carried out in olden 

 days that M. Broca, in his paper on the Caverne de I'Homme Mort just quoted 

 from, explains the fact of the subequality of the skulls in the two sexes. This is 

 an adequate explanation of the facts ; but to the facts as already stated, I can add 

 from my own experience the fact that though the female skulls of Prehistoric times 

 are often, they are not always equal, or nearly, to those of the male sex of those 

 times ; and, secondly, that whatever the relative size of the head, the limbs and 

 trunk of the female portion of those tribes were, as is still the case with modern 

 savages, very usually disproportionately smaller than those of the male. This is 

 readily enough explicable by a reference to the operations of causes exemplifica- 

 tions of the working of which are unhappily not far to seek now, and may be 

 found in any detail you please in those anthropologically interesting (however 

 otherwise unpleasant) documents, the Police Reports. 



Having before my mind the liability we are all under fallaciously to content 

 om-selves with recording the shots which hit, I must not omit to say that one at 

 least of the more recently propounded doctrines in Craniology does not seem to me 

 to be firmly established. This is the doctrine of " occipital dolichocephaly " being 

 a characteristic of the lower races of modern days and of Prehistoric races as com- 

 pared with modern civilized races. I have not been able to convince myself by my 

 own measurements of the tenability of this position ; and I observe that Ihering 

 has expressed himself to the same effect, appending his measurements in proof of 

 his statements in his paper, " Zur Reform der Craniometrie," published in the 

 ' Zeitschrift flir Ethnologic ' for 187.3. The careful and extensive measurements of 

 Aeby * and Weisbacli t have shown that the occipital region enjoys wider limits of 

 oscillation than either of the other divisions of the cranial vault. I have some regret 

 in saying this, partly because writers on such subj ects as "Literature and Dogma" have 

 already made use of the phrase, "occipitally dolichocephalic," as if it represented one 

 of the permanent acquisitions of science ; and I say it with even more regret, as it 

 concerns the deservedly honom'ed names of Gratiolet and of Broca, to whom Anthro- 

 pology owes so much. What is true in the doctrine relates, among other things, to 

 what is matter of common observation as to the fore part of the head rather than to any 

 thing which is really constant in the back part of the skull. This matter of com- 

 mon observation is to the effect that when the ear is " well forward " in the head, 

 we do ill to augur well of the intelligence of its owner. Now the fore part of the 

 brain is irrigated by the carotid arteries, which, though smaller in calibre during 

 the first years of life, during which the brain so nearly attains its full size, than they 

 are in the adult, are nevertheless relatively large even in those early days, and are 

 both absolutely, and relatively to the brain which they have to nourish, much larger 

 than the vertebral arteries, which feed its posterior lobes. It is easy therefore to 

 see that a brain in which the fore part supplied by the carotids has been stinted of 

 due supplies of food, or however stunted in growth, is a brain the entire length and 

 breadth of which is likely to be ill-nourished. As I have never seen reason to believe 

 in any cerebral localization which was not explicable by a reference to vascular irri- 



fation, it was with much pleivsure that I read the remarks of Messrs. Wilks and 

 loxon in their recently published ' Pathological Anatomy,' pp. 207, 208, as to the in- 

 dications furnished by the distribution of the Pacchionian bodies as to differences 

 existing in the blood-cun-ents on the back and those on the fore part of the brain. 

 These remarks are the more valuable, as mere hydraulics, Professor Clifton assures 

 me, would not have so clearly pointed out what the physiological upgrowths seem 

 to indicate. Anj' increase, again, in the length of the posterior cerebral arteries is 

 pro tunto a disadvantage to the parts they feed. If the blood-cun-ent, as these 



* Aeby, ' Schadelform des Menschen und der Affen,' pp. 11, 12, and 128. 

 tWeisbacb, ' Die Scbfidelform der Eoumanen,' p. 32, 1800. 



