712 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



he gave them so important a position in his system of classification, based on the 

 characters of the skull in the various races of men. 



Of the thirty-nine skulls included in this analysis, twenty-five were apparently males 

 and fourteen females. The cranial capacity of the males ranged from 940 cubic 

 centimetres in a Bhil to 1470 c.c. in a Kol, and the mean of the series was 1287 c.c. 

 Five were upwards of 1400 ; seven were between 1300 and 1400 ; eleven were between 

 1200 and 1300 ; one between 1100 and 1200 and one between 900 and 1000 c.c. The 

 cranial capacity of the females ranged from 980 to 1305 c.c. and the mean of the 

 series was 1179 c.c. Only one female skull was as much as 1305 c.c, seven were 

 between 1200 and 1300; three between 1100 and 1200; two from 1000 to 1100 and 

 one below 1000 c.c. Variations in capacity were shown in the diff"erent tribes in 

 both sexes, but the females, as is indeed customary, were distinctly less than the 

 males, though, if I am correct in the apportionment of the skulls between the two 

 sexes, each sex had a skull whose capacity was below 1000 c.c. It is, however, 

 noteworthy tliat the highest capacity in the female series was only 1305 c.c. 



Sagittal Contours. 

 (Figures, pages 716, 717.) 



The late Mr George Busk published fifty-one years ago * a memoir on " Cranio- 

 metry and Craniography," in which he criticised the cranial measurements proposed by 

 VON Baer in the Gottingen Anthropological Report, t He showed the importance inter 

 alia of making measurements to radiate from a definite fixed point to the surface of the 

 skull, so as to aff'ord sufficient data for estimating the relative proportions of the diff"erent 

 divisions of the cranium. Busk selected as the fixed point for these measurements the 

 centre of the external auditory meatus, from which radiating lines were drawn to 

 certain points on the surface. He devised and figured a craniometer with a pair of 

 movable plugs, one of which could be inserted into each meatus, and could be employed 

 to measure heads as well as crania. Dr Barnard Davis used similar radial measure- 

 ments in the compilation of his Catalogues of Crania.J Professor Huxley pointed 

 out§ the advisability of bisecting skulls longitudinally and vertically in or near the 

 mesial plane, and he drew and measured lines from more than one point on the base to 

 points on the cranial vault. Professor Cleland emphasised || the importance of radial 

 measurements and selected the postauricular depression in preference to the meatus as 

 the point from which the radii should be drawn. 



In my Challenger Report IT I published longitudinal mesial sections through a 

 number of the skulls, and recorded lines and measurements radiating from the basion 

 to definite points in the mesial line of the surface of the skull. I also erected from the 



* Natural History licview, October 1862. 



+ Bericht ueber die ZusmnmetiJcunft einiger Anthropologen, Leipzig, 186L 



I Thesaurus Craniorum, 1867 ; Supplement, 1875 ; also in Crania Britannica. 

 § Journ. Anat. a7id Phys., vol. i. p. 60. 



II "Variations of the Human Skull," Trans. Roy. Soc, London, 1869. 

 IT Zool. Challenger Exp., part xxix., 1884. 



