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Cranial Type-Contours 
the Congo Negro ; if now the English be compared it will be found closer to the 
Negro than the Egyptian is in the upper T 4 n th of the section ; after that Negro 
and Egyptian approach, while the English show greater bi-auricular width. 
Lastly, if we superpose XX and XXIX in tissue on XVII, we note, making 
the frontals coincide, that both Egyptian and English have excess of occipital 
development, but that the Egyptian is nearer to the English than to the Negro ; 
in the temporal regions the English is nearer to the Negro than the Egyptian, 
while from ordinates Nos. 4 to 10, the Negro and Egyptian are close together. 
The contours therefore do not suggest that the Egyptian of circa 400 B.C. differs 
from the European of the 17th century by being everywhere nearer to the negro. 
(e) Relative nearness of Negro, Egyptian and European. Finally, if the reader 
wishes to realise how little is the evolutionary gap between Negro, Egyptian and 
European, let him place the tissues of Negro, Egyptian and 17th century English 
upon those of a prehistoric skull, like the Cro-magnon. Thus for the sagittal 
section, he places XV, XVIII and XXVII on VI, and realises at once how 
enormous is the gap between prehistoric man and Englishman compared to that 
between Negro and Englishman. XVI, XIX aud XXVIII superposed on VII tell 
the same tale for the transverse vertical section ; it is noteworthy that the English 
skull differs from Negro and Egyptian (or Guanche) in preserving the bi-auricular 
breadth of the Cro-magnon, while the Eskimo, smaller in every other respect, 
actually exceeds it. The same lesson may be drawn from the horizontal sections 
when XVII, XX and XXIX in tissue are placed on VIII, although we must leave 
it to the reader to place the superposed contours to suit his own views on the 
relative proportions of occipital and frontal change. 
(7) The object of this paper has been solely to suggest a method, possibly of 
service to the craniologist. It is, I think, desirable that type cranial contours 
should be formed of modern and ancient crania. If possible 100 crania of both 
sexes* should be dealt with, and the final type forms should include at least the 
chief cranial points below the nasion-gamma line as in our Fig. I. We have taken 
the Ny line as an axis of reference because it seemed possible to compare in that 
way cranial and living head contours, but this is by no means needful. Further, 
when it has been done, the final type contour may be considered as quite inde- 
pendent of this line. Thus interesting results may be obtained, if we compare 
different ci'ania by making their nasion-bregma lines coincide ; it is singular how 
little divergence will be found in cranial contours, if we make the nasio-bregmatic 
lines coincide f. Others may have their own views to emphasise from glabella-inion 
or nasion-inion bases, while not a few may prefer to adjust to coincidence the 
nasion-basilar line — the value of this is indicated by placing the tissue of Fig. II, 
the Egyptian, upon Fig. I, Thurtell's contour. All these points could be followed 
out in detail on the contours once drawn. 
* As a first series it might be well to confine attention to adult male skulls, the sexing in this case 
being relatively easy. 
f Cf. for example the Eskimo XXI superposed on the English XXVII and we see how much of 
the difference between the two types lies below the lambda. 
