BLAKE — OJf THE CEAKIA OE ANCIENT RACES. 



223 



however, of high intellect this conformation may frequently be re- 

 marked ; and I have observed it in more than one person with whom 

 it was correlated with a high degree of mental ability. 



The words of Professor Owen, applied to the Xepal crania, are also 

 applicable to the remains from the Stone period. " There are not 

 more than two or three skulls in the entire series which would have 

 suggested, had they been presented to observation without previous 

 knowledge of their country, that they belonged to any primary divi- 

 sion of human kind distinct from that usually characterized by cra- 

 niologists as Caucasian or Indo-European ; the majority might have 

 been obtained from graveyards in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin, and 

 have indicated a low condition of the Caucasian race. . . . They pre- 

 sent varieties in the proportion of length and breadth of cranium, in 

 the development of the nasal bones, in the divarication or prominence 

 of the malar bones, in the shape of the forehead, in the degree of 

 prominence of the frontal sinuses and projection of the supraciliary 

 ridge, which would be found perhaps in as many promiscuously-col- 

 lected skulls of the operatives of any of our large manufacturing 

 towns, and which would be associated with corresponding diversities 

 of features and physiognomy."* 



The range of variation offered by the above skulls (the Neanderthal 

 cranium excepted) is, on the whole, not greater than between a large 

 series of the skulls of any given district — as, e.g.^ Nepal. Neither 

 in the size of the supraorbital ridge ; the extent of frontal develop- 

 ment ; the form of the occiput, whether shelving, vertical, or globular ; 

 the persistence of an interparietal bone ; the presence or absence of 

 a sphenoido-parietal suture ; the position of the condyles ; the deve- 

 lopment of sagittal or lambdoidal crests ; the size, shape, or position 

 of the styloid or vaginal processes — have any of those differences 

 which so prominently characterize the Homo sapiens been departed 

 from, nor any of the simial features superadded or retained as em- 

 bryonal characters ; nor have the latest published demonstrations of 

 the anatomical characters of these ancient crania by the ablest advo- 

 cates of the hypothesis of direct selective transmutation afforded us 

 any satisfactory evidence to break down the broad bridge of demarca- 

 tion which still separates us from the inferior animals. 



The researches of Professor Steenstrup and others have led to the 

 proposition of a series of periods, as exhibited in the annexed table, 

 in which the propositions put forth by the advocates of the excessive 

 anticjuity of man are set forth in a tabular form. Direct contempo- 

 raneity of e. g. the denizens of the Kjokkenmoddings with the 

 Natchez mound-builders is not inferred. " It would have been very 

 much better for geology if so loose and ambiguous a word as 

 ' contemporaneous ' had been excluded from her terminology, and if 

 in its stead some term, expressing similarity of serial relation and 

 excluding the notion of time altogether, had been employed to 



* Owen, ' Keport on a Series of Nepfilese Skulls.' Transactions of the British Asso- 

 ciation, 1859. 



