XXVIII 
ON FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN 
Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, vol. tii. 1858-62, 
Pp. 420—422. (Read Friday, February 7, 1862.) 
THE purpose of the discourse was to give an explanation of the 
interest attaching to two casts upon the table—the one that of a skull, 
discovered and described by Professor Schmerling, from the Cave of 
Engis, in Belgium; the other, discovered by Dr. Fuhlrott and 
described by Professor Schaaffhausen, from a cave in the Neanderthal 
near Diisseldorf—the former being the oldest skull whose age is 
geologically definable, the latter the most aberrant and degraded of 
human skulls. 
The nature and extent of the cranial modifications exhibited by 
the man-like apes and by man were discussed ; and their modifica- 
tions were shown to depend upon variations in the capacity and 
in the form of the cranium, in the greater or less development of its 
ridges, and in the size and form of the face. In respect of such 
differences, skulls have been called dolichocephalic and brachycephalic 
orthognathous and prognathous, &c. 
Neither orthognathism nor prognathism are necessarily correlated 
with brachycephaly or dolichocephaly. But the most extreme prog- 
nathism is accompanied by a dolichocephalic cranium, while perfect 
orthognathism may occur with extreme brachycephalism. 
The known varieties of the skull have a certain geographical 
distribution, which may be broadly expressed by drawing a line upon 
a map of the world from Russian Tartary to the Gulf of Guinea, and 
by regarding the two ends of that line as ethnological poles, while 
another line, drawn at right angles to it, from Western Europe 
to Hindostan, may be called the ethnological equator. 
