110 ANTHROPOID APES. 



above and below its bony support. Its edge may be 

 more or less sharp, more or less like a crest in its 

 development, wider or narrower, with or without a 

 central eminence, but its appearance is always 

 striking. In young male and female gorillas, orangs, 

 and chimpanzees this formation represents the com- 

 pletely formed transverse occipital crests, which are 

 found for the most part in aged male animals of 

 these species. These swellings may also be observed 

 on the skulls of adult men of all times and all 

 nations. They are by no means rare in the skulls 

 which are in ordinary use at the Berlin School of 

 Anatomy, and they are remarkably common in 

 many groups of skulls. They are frequent among 

 the skulls, for the most part without their lower 

 jaws, which the late Dr. Sachs disinterred in 

 a Mohammedan burial-ground of the thirteenth 

 century, near Cairo. These are the remains of 

 Mohammedans of different ranks, but, for the most 

 part, of the peasantry or fellaheen. Ecker was able 

 to trace the sagittal crest in the skulls of Australian 

 males, while it is absent in the females. Similar 

 indications of the bony crest have been observed bv 

 me in the roof-shaped or scaphocephalic skulls of 

 many negroes, but in these cases I am not aware 

 whether there is a corresponding distinction of sex. 

 It can hardly be denied that this bony prominence 

 is a human characteristic. 



Broca has given the term pterion to the H-shaped 

 connection formed by the sutures between the parietal 

 bone, the greater wing of the sphenoid bone, the 

 squamous portion of the temporal bone, and the 



