BLAKE — OTf THE CRANIA OF ANCIENT EACES. 



225 



" As types of these two varieties of crania, Professor Huxley ad- 

 duced the West Coast African negro and the Turk. The typical 

 cranium of the "West Coast African negro is long and narrow, its 

 transverse measurement being only six or seven tenths of the longi- 

 tudinal, while the side to side diameter of the Turk's skull is as much 

 as eight or nine tenths of the fore and aft measurement. The facial 

 angle of the skulls also was different, owing to the projection of the 

 jaws in the negro : the dolichocephalic skull was prognathic, while 

 the brachycephalic skull was orthognathic. The most striking de- 

 velopments of these diversities were associated with the greatest 

 differences of climate and situation. If a line be drawn from the 

 centre of Eussian Tartary to the Bight of Benin, the north-eastern 

 extremity of the line would represent the centre or pole of the 

 brachycephalic orthognathic variety, the south-western would be 

 the centre of the dolichocephalic prognathic type. The centre of 

 [Russian Tartary was distinguished by an arid climate and great 

 diversities of heat and cold, and presented the strongest contrast 

 with the hot, moist, reeking swamps of the Western Coast of Africa. 

 Now, in whatever direction we diverge from these dolichocephalic 

 and brachycephalic centres, we find the type beginning to fiide and 

 to pass into the opposite. Thus, diverging from the brachycephalic 

 pole, if we pass eastward into China, we notice the population be- 

 coming more dolichocephalic and prognathic ; if we travel northward 

 to the Aleutian Islanders, Esquimaux, and Greenlanders, we observe 

 them more or less long-headed as compared with the Tartar type. 

 The same divergence of type is seen on leaving the dolichocephalic 

 centre ; the peculiarities of the Western African cranial conforma- 

 tion gradually subside and approach in proportion the other type. 

 Another line drawn across the centre of the former from the British 

 Islands to India would mark a population whose skulls may be said 

 to be oval, presenting a medium betw^een the dolichocephalic and 

 brachycephalic conformation." The question w^as then raised " w-he- 

 ther the distribution of cranial forms had been the same in all periods 

 of the world's history, or whether the older races, in any locality, 

 possessed a different cranial character from their successors." 



The induction that, on the whole, the brachycephalic type of 

 cranium is more ancient than the dolichocephalic is capable only of 

 a limited application. The skulls from Sennen, Plymouth, and 

 Mewslade, said to be of antiquity transcending human historical 

 records, all belong, as Professor Busk has stated, to the dolicho- 

 cephalic type. If brachycephalic-skulled men existed before these, 

 their remains have not been vouchsafed to us, in England at least. 

 In the Continent, on the contrary, the Engis skull, said to be " the 

 oldest relic of man on record," exhibits a dolichocephalic type. So 

 does the Neanderthal skull, " the low^est in rank of any human being," 

 exhibit, as well as can be ascertained from its fragmentary state, a 

 long-headed or dolichocephalic type. These two types, therefore, 

 "the oldest" and "the most degraded," according to the precon- 

 ceived theory, belong to the so-called modern or dolichocephalic 



VOL. V. 2 G 



