TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 581 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1878. 

 This Department did not meet. 



MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 1878. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Methods and Results of Measurements of the Capacity of Simian Crania. 



By William Henry Flower, F.E.S. 



The capacity of the cavity of the cranium is one of its most important 

 measurements, and at the same time one of the most difficult to ascertain. The 

 results of about three thousand experiments were given in this communication. 

 Two methods had been chiefly employed — 1. That of Broca, as described in his 

 memoir Sur la Mensuration de la Capacite du Crane, Mem. de la Soci^te d' An- 

 thropologic, T. l er (2 e Sene), Paris 1873 ; the material used being leaden shot. 



2. That of Busk, " Note on a ready method of measuring the capacity of skulls," 

 "Journ. Anthrop. Inst.," vol. iii.'p. 200. In both the author has had the 

 advantage of the personal explanations and instructions of their respective in- 

 ventors. When these two methods were used to measure the same skulls, the 

 author found that the first invariably gave a larger capacity than the second, 

 amounting generally to as much as 3 or 4 cubic inches. To ascertain which, or 

 whether, either was absolutely correct, test skulls, prepared by stopping the larger 

 apertures with wax, and impregnating the bone tissue with melted paraffin to 

 make it impervious to fluids were employed. In these the capacity could be 

 ascertained with exactness by means either of inercury or water. In a skull so 

 prepared, Broca's method of mensuration gave 70 cubic centimetres above the real 

 capacity, Busk's 10 to 15. A slight modification of the last, using mustard seed, 

 and taking every care to fill both the cranium and the chorernometer to the utmost 

 by repeated shakings, gave very accurate results. The details of the method 

 (which cannot be described in an abstract) were demonstrated to the audience. 



The results of the measurement of the collection of about a thousand crania 

 in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England were then described, 

 but their value as affording the data for comparing different races was not great, 

 owing to the insufficient numbers of each race available for comparison, as all 

 immature skulls, i.e. those in which the basal suture was not closed, were rejected 

 in the averages, and the sexes were carefully separated. To ascertain the influence 

 of sex, all the skulls of whatever race in the collection in which the sex is abso- 

 lutely known from other evidence than that presented by the skull itself, were 

 measured with the following result : — Sixt3'-three skulls of known males have an 

 average of 1433 cubic centimetres. Twenty-four skulls of known females have 

 an average of 1224 cubic centimetres, giving the proportion of 1000 to 854. The 

 largest normal skull in the collection is 2075 ; it is that of an Englishman of 

 unknown history ; the smallest, a female Vedda, measures 960 cubic centimetres. 

 The following are the averages of male skulls only, expressed in cubic centimetres, 

 the numbers of the skulls measured being placed in brackets. The insufficiency^? 

 many of these will be obvious, but they may serve as approximations. With 



