TO RELATIVE CAPACITY OF RACES. 193 



Full value lias been assigned at all periods to the well-developed 

 forehead. It is characteristic of man. The physiognomist and the 

 phrenologist have each given significance to it in their respective 

 systems ; and it has received no less prominent recognition from the 

 poets. A fully developed forehead is assumed as distinctive of the 

 male skull. But Juliet, in '' The Two Gentlemen of Yerona," when 

 depreciating her rival, exclaims, " Ay, but her forehead's low ;" and 

 the jealous Queen of Egypt, in "Antony and Cleopatra," is told of 

 Octavia that " her forehead is as low as she would wish it." " The 

 fair large front " of Milton's perfect man is the external index of an 

 ample cerebrum : the organ to which the seat of consciousness, intel- 

 ligence, and will is assigned. It is therefore consistent with this 

 that a low, retreating forehead is popularly assumed to be the char- 

 acteristic index of the savage, and of the unintellectual among 

 civilized races. But the cerebral characteristics of both ancient and 

 modern civilized races hare utill to be studied in detail; and the 

 influence of race and sex on the form of the head and the mass and 

 weight of the brain, iavolves some curious questions in relation to the 

 oldest illustrations of the physical characteristics of man, and to the 

 effect of civilization on the relative development of the sexes. 



Early observations led Dr. Pruner-Bey and other ethnologists of 

 France to recognize in certain ancient Gaulish skulls of a brachyce- 

 phalic type the evidences of a primitive race, assumed to represent 

 the inhabitants of France and of Central Europe during its reindeer 

 period, and which appeared to be assigned with reasonable probability 

 to a Mongol origin. But in the Cro-Magnon cavern, and in other 

 caves more recently explored, the remains of a race of men have been 

 brought to light markedly dolichocephalic, and no less striking in 

 cranial capacity. Dr. Broca speaks of these ancient cave-dwellers 

 of the valley of the Yezere as characterized by " sure signs of a 

 powerful cerebral organization. The skulls are large. Their dia- 

 meters, their curves, their capacity, attain, and even surpass, our 

 medium skulls of the present day. The forehead is wide, by no means 

 receding, but describing a fine curve. The amplitude of the frontal 

 tuberosities denotes a large development of the anterior cerebral lobes, 

 which are the seat of the most noble intellectual faculties." Along- 

 side of the remains of this ancient race, and in the underlying de- 

 posits, lay those of the mammoth, cave-lion and bear, fossil horse, and 

 reindeer. In neighbouring caves of the same valley, and especially 

 2 



