REVIEWS — DEFORMED FRAGMENTARY SKULL. 489 



to it under the name of the * Cotton Grotto ' is made by Kadi Mejr- 

 ed-din in an Arabic MS., entitled ' The Sublime Companion to the 

 History of Jerusalem and Hebron/ and bearing date A.D. 1495. A 

 gentleman who entered the cave subsequently to the visit of the 

 Messrs. Barclay, states, in the ' Boston Traveller,' that though its 

 existence was long suspected, ' nothing was positively known regard- 

 ing it, as it has been kept carefully closed by the successive governors 

 of Jerusalem. The mouth of the cavern was probably walled up as 

 early as the times of the crusades, to prevent its falling into the 

 hands of a besieging army ; earth was thrown up against this wall, 

 so as effectually to conceal it from view, and it is only iipon the 

 closest scrutiny that the present entrance can be perceived.' 



The circumstances under which the skull was discovered afforded 

 no clue to its ethnic classification ; nor does its condition furnish any 

 very decisive guide to the era to which it should be referred. It is 

 confidently believed by those who have familiarised themselves with 

 the minute characteristic details of comparative craniography, that 

 by these alone ethnical types can be determined. A skull now in 

 the collection of the Academy of Sciences at Philadelphia, and figur- 

 ed in Dr. Meigs' Catalogue of Human Crania, No. 1352, as ancient 

 Phoenicean, was sent by M. Fresnel, the celebrated archgeologist, to 

 the late Dr. Morton, without the slightest information as to where, 

 or the circumstances under which, it was found. After careful study 

 of its characteristics. Dr. Morton pronounced it to be Phoenician. 

 He afterwards learned from Eresnel that it was found in the sepul- 

 chral cave of Ben Djemma, in the Island of Malta, and probably 

 belonged to an individual of that race, which, in the most remote 

 times, had occupied the northern coast of Africa and the adjacent 

 isles. It thus appears that Dr. Morton, guided by osteologic charac- 

 ters alone, was enabled to announce the correct geographical locality 

 of this skull, and perhaps also its true ethnic value ; though of this 

 latter point Dr. Meigs expresses some doubts, arising from the 

 remarkable resemblance which this skull bears to that of a wandering 

 Chinga of Transylvania, depicted in Blumenbach's Decades (Tab. xi.). 

 In like manner, some time before his death. Dr. Prichard sent to 

 Prof. E-etzius two human crania, requesting an opinion as to the race 

 to which they belonged. He pronounced one of them to be Roman 

 and the other Celtic, and was informed by Prichard that he was in 

 all probability correct, for the two skulls had been dug up in an old 



