592 PROFESSOR SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



approximation to this condition, though without actual junction of the plates of bone, 

 occurred in two other specimens, owing to ossification of the pterygo-spinous ligament. 



Five crania showed a vertical transverse depression parallel to and immediately 

 behind the coronal suture, a condition which is usually regarded as due to a tight band 

 or ribbon having been worn across this part of the head in infancy and early childhood. 

 Attention was especially drawn to this character by the late Paul Broca, who recognised 

 it as a common occurrence in the heads of the people of France living in and near 

 Toulouse, where the practice of wearing such a band prevails, and to this appearance 

 the name la deformation toulousaine has been applied. 



In my Report on Human Crania in the Challenger Reports, part xxix., 1884, to which 

 I have several times referred in this memoir, I have summarised the observations made 

 on the variations in ossification noted in 143 crania of aboriginal people therein 

 described, e.g. from South Africa, South America, Australia and the islands of the 

 Pacific. When compared with the series of Scottish skulls several interesting points of 

 difference may be noted. The absence of the metopic condition of the frontal was 

 remarked in the aboriginal series, although I have since seen it in the skull of a Veddah 

 and in an Andaman islander, and Flower has observed metopism in six Andaman crania. 

 The squamous-temporal articulated with the frontal in ten of the aboriginal skulls, which 

 is a distinctly larger proportion than the seven cases I have noted in the Scottish 

 crania. The observations of Kanke and Virchow on German skulls, of Calori on Italian, 

 and of Wenzel Gruber on Sclavonic crania, give something less than 2 per cent, of cases 

 of temporo-frontal articulation, which is not so high as in the Scottish skulls. On 

 the other hand, the aboriginal series had epipteric bones in sixteen crania, i.e. 11 per- 

 cent., whilst in the Scottish skulls they were present in twenty-five specimens, about 

 14 per cent., which is a larger proportion. No third occipital condyl was seen in a 

 Scottish skull, whilst four aboriginal crania had this character. Only one Scottish skull 

 had a pterygo-spinous foramen, which was noticed in three aboriginal crania. Exostoses 

 in the external auditory meatus, so common in the Pacific Islanders, had no represen- 

 tative in the Scottish skulls. Wormian bones in the lambdoidal suture were not uncom- 

 mon in both series, but the presence of sutural bones in the coronal and sagittal sutures 

 was perhaps somewhat more frequent in the Scottish crania. 



It would seem, therefore, that whilst some forms of variation in cranial ossification 

 are more frequent in aboriginal crania, others again are more numerous in a civilised. 

 people like the natives of Scotland. 



General Survey op the Characters of Scottish Skulls. 



In the preceding sections the characters of the skulls obtained in the several Scottish 

 counties have been described in some detail. In this chapter it is intended to look at 

 them as a whole, with the view of elucidating the form, dimensions, and proportions 

 which prevailed in the crania generally. I have endeavoured to group them according 



