564 , PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



In seven males the mean horizontal circumference was 538 mm., and the mean vertical 

 transverse circumference was 439*8, whilst in five males the mean longitudinal circumfer- 

 ence was 520 mm. One skull was mesognathous, the six others capable of being measured 

 were ortbognathous. In sach skull the nasal index was leptorhine ; five orbits were 

 megaseme, two were mesoseme, one microseme. Two skulls had hyperdolichuranic 

 palates, two dolichuranic, one hyperbrachyuranic, two mesuranic. The complete facial 

 index could not be obtained, but as the maxillo-facial index was in each specimen 

 leptoprosopic the proportions for the entire region were without doubt high-faced. 



c. The skulls obtained from interments either in Edinburgh or Leith were thirty- 

 three in number, and many of them belonged to the collection of the Henderson Trust. 

 Nine are referred to in Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland* and of these six 

 were obtained in 1832 in the course of excavating the site of the Law Courts which 

 were built on ground which had at one time been a city cemetery, situated between St 

 Giles' Church and the Cowgate. It was probably some time after the Reformation 

 before this was disused as a place of burial One skull was found at the top of the 

 Vennel whilst digging the foundations of a school on the site of the old wall built after 

 the battle of Flodden, and another was procured in 1830 on the northern slope of the 

 Castle Hill. Two skulls were found in 1854 at St Leonard's Hill, where at one time 

 there is believed to have been a cemetery. Nine skulls came from Leith, and were 

 obtained in 1831 in the course of making an excavation in Constitution Street.! It 

 was thought at the time that they might be the remains of persons who fell at the 

 siege of Leith by the English in 1559, but from the appearance of the skulls it is not 

 likely that they are so old. As a part of Constitution Street was carried through the 

 churchyard of South Leith, they had probably been interred there at a more recent 

 period. Fourteen skulls belonged to the University collection. Two were obtained from 

 beneath the pavement of St Giles' during the course of the recent remodelling of its 

 interior ; a third was presented by Sir Arthur Mitchell, and had been procured in 

 the grounds of St Roque, which at one time had been the site of an old ecclesiastical 

 establishment. Nine were obtained in the course of recent excavations which interfered 

 with the former burying-ground of the Kirk o' Field ; one was found in digging the 

 foundations of the Solicitors' Library, and one was from a disused burial-ground. 



This series of thirty-three crania from burial-grounds in Edinburgh and Leith 

 exhibited differences in form and proportions, which is only what might be expected 

 from the mixing of nationalities in large centres of population, especially when one is a 

 seaport town. 



I have regarded nineteen crania as males and fourteen as females, and of the latter one 

 (H.T. 408) was about ten years old, judging from the dentition. The lower jaw was 

 absent in the majority of the skulls. Five crania were metopic, and in some others 

 the frontal suture was not fully obliterated near the nasion. In several specimens the 



* 1851, pp. 166, 176.; also Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, vol. viii. p. 185. 

 t Phrenological Journal end Miscellany, vol. vii. p. 287. 



