TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 153 



facts seem to show, is slower iu tlie posterior lobes of the braiu, it is, upon 

 purely phj'sical principles of eudosuiosis aud exosiuosis, plain that these seg- 

 ments of the brain aro less efficiout organs for the mind to work with; aud 

 here agiin "occipital dolichocephaly " would have a justification, though one 

 founded on the facts of the nutrition of the brain-colls, not on the proportions of 

 the braincase. In many (but not iu all) parts of Continental Europe, agaiu, the 

 epithet "longheaded " would not have the laudatory connotation which, thanks to 

 our Saxon blood, and in spite of the existence amongst us of other varieties of 

 dolichocephaly, it still retains here. Aud the brachycephalic head which, abroad* 

 at least, is ordinarily a more capacious one, and carried on more vigorous shoulders 

 and by more vigorous owners altogether, than the dolichocephalic, strikes a man 

 who has been used to live amongst dolichocephali by nothing more forcibly, 

 when he first comes to take notice of it, than by the nearness of its external ear to 

 the back of the head ; and this may be said to constitute an artistic occipital 

 brachycephalism. But this does not imply that the con-s-erse condition is to be 

 found conversely correlated, nor does it justify the use of the phi-ase " occipital 

 dolichocephaly " in any etymological, nor even in any ethnographical sense. 



I shall now content myself, as far as craniology is concerned, b}- an enumeration of 

 some at least of the various recent memoirs upon the subject which appear to me to 

 be of preeminent value. And foremost amongst these I will mention Professor 

 Cleland's long and elaborate scientitic aud artistic paper on the Variations of the 

 Human Skull, which appeared iu the Philosophical Transactions for 1809. Next I 

 wiU name Eckers admu-able, though shorter, memoir on Cranial Curvature, which 

 appeared iu the ' Archiv fiir Anthropologie,' a jom-nal already owing much to his 

 labours, iu the j'ear 1871. Aeby's writings I have already referred to, and Ihering's, 

 to be found in recent numbers of the 'Archiv fiii- Anthropologic' and the 

 'Zeitschiift fiir Ethnologic,' deserve yom- notice. Professor BischofTs paper on 

 the Mutual Relations of the horizontal circumference of the Skidl and of its con- 

 tents to each other and to the weight of the Brain, has not, as I think, obtained the 

 notice which it deserves. It is to be found in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society of Mimich for 1864, the same year which witnessed the publication of 

 the now constantly quoted ' Crania Helvetica,' of Professors His and Riitimeyer. 

 Some of the most important results coutaiued in this work, and much important 

 matter besides, was made available to the exclusively English reader by Professor 

 Huxley, two years later, in the ' Prehistoric Remains of Caithness.' I have made 

 a list, perhaps not an exhaustive one, but containiug some dozen memou-s by Dr. 

 Beddoe, and having read them or nearly all of them, I can with a very safe con- 

 science recommend you all to do the like. I can say nearly the same as regards 

 Broca and Virchow, adding that the former of these two savans has set the other 

 two with whom I have coupled him an excellent example, by collecting and pub- 

 lishing his papers in consecutive volumes. 



But I should forget not only what is due to the place in which I am speaking, 

 but what is due to the subject I am here concerned with, if in speaking of its 

 literatin-e, I omitted the name of your own townsman, Prichard. He lias been 

 called, and, I think, justly, the " father of modern Anthropology." I am but put- 

 ting the same thing in other words, aud adding something more specific to it, 

 when I compare his works to those of Gibbon and Thirlwall, and sslj that they 

 have attained and seem likely to maintain permanently a position and importance 

 commensurate with that of the "stately aud undecaying"' productions of those 

 great English Historians. Subsequently to the first appearance of those histories 

 other works have appeared by other authors, who have dealt in them with the 

 same periods of time. I have no wish to depreciate those works ; their authors 

 have not rarely rectified a slip and corrected an error into which their great prede- 

 cessors had fallen. Nay, more, the later comers have by no means neglected to 

 avail themselves of the advantages which the increase of knowledge and the vast 



Eolitical experience of the last thirty years have put at their disposal, and they 

 ave thus occasionally had opportunities of showing more of the true proportions 



* See upon this point : — Broca, Bull. Soc. Antli. Paris, ii. p. 648, 1861 ; ibid. Dec. 5, 

 1872 ; Virchow, Archiv fiir Anth. v. p. 535 ; Zeitschrift fiir Ethnol. iv. 2, p. 36 ; Samm- 

 lungen, ix. 193, p. 45, 1874 ; Beddoe, Mem. Anth. Soc. Lond. ii. p. 350. 

 1875. 12 



