155 
of skulls possessing these characters, which I have seen, are 
from the neighbourhood of Port Adelaide in South Australia, 
and have been used by the natives as water vessels ; to which 
end the face has been knocked away, and a string passed 
through the vacuity and the occipital foramen, so that the 
skull was suspended by the greater part of its basis. 
(4 Up i » fi me 
ye Ber Wi agit 
\\ 7) 
was Win 
Fig. 31.—An Australian skull from Western Port, in the Museum of the 
Royal College of Surgeons, with the contour of the Neanderthal skull. Both 
reduced to one-third the natural size. 
Figure 31 represents the contour of a skull of this kind from 
Western Port, with the jaw attached, and of the Neander- 
thal skull, both reduced to one third of the size of nature. A 
small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with 
a corresponding increase of the supraciliary ridge, would con- 
vert the Australian brain case into a form identical with that 
of the aberrant fossil. 
And now, to return to the fossil skulls, and to the rank 
which they occupy among, or beyond, these existing varieties of 
cranial conformation. In the first place, I must remark, that, 
as Professor Schmerling well observed (supra, p. 122) in com- 
menting upon the Engis skull, the formation of a safe judgment 
upon the question is greatly hindered by the absence of the jaws 
