454 SKULLS OF WESTERN AFRICANS. App. L 



are associated tlie larger cranial dimensions, as a 

 general rule. But, in all, the prevalent low social 

 status, the concomitant sameness, and contracted 

 range, of ideas — -the comparatively limited variety 

 in the whole series of living phenomena, from child- 

 hood to old age, of human communities of the grade 

 of the Ashiras and Fans — govern the conformity of 

 their low cranial organisation. 



In my work on the Archetype skeleton I note, 

 among other characters of the general homology of 

 bones of the human head, the degrees of variability 

 to which the several vertebral elements were respec- 

 tively subject.* 



The centrums and neurapophyses of the cranial 

 vertebra3 maintain the greatest constancy, the neural 

 spines the least, in the vertebral column of mammals^ 

 as in the cranial region thereof in the vast series of 

 the varieties and races of mankind : the htemal arches 

 and their diverging appendages are the seats of in- 

 termediate degrees of variation. 



Accordingly, between the lowest forms of African 

 and Australian skulls and the highest forms of Euro- 

 pean skulls, the difference in size and shape is least 

 in the basi-occipito-sphenoids, in the ex-occipitals, 

 alisphenoids, and orbitosphenoids : it is greatest in 

 the super-occipital, parietals, frontals, and nasals. The 

 maxillary and mandible are next in degree of varia- 

 bility, especially at the terminal anterior part which 

 represents the hasmal spine, and is the seat of the 

 characters which Ethnology terms " prognathism," 



* 'On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton.' Svo. 

 1843, p. 137. 



