HUXLET — NOTES UPON HUMAN REMAINS. 
203 
The base of this skull is remarkable in several respects. The occi- 
pital foramen is placed far back, and its plane is directed more back- 
wards than is usual in human skulls. AYhen the base of the skull is 
turned upwards and the glabello-occipital line is horizontal (its length 
being 6*7 inches), the anterior edge of the occipital foramen lies I'o 
inch above the line, and a perpendicular let fall from it would cut the 
line 3-9 inches from its anterior end. A similar line let fall from the 
posterior edge would cut the glabello-occipital line at 5"3 inches from 
its anterior end, and that edge is only 0 9 of an inch above it. In a 
length of 1'4<, the plane of the occipital foramen, therefore, has a fall 
of 0 6 towards the glabello-occipital line. 
In a well-formed European skull, whose glabello-occipital line 
measures 7*0 inches, while its extreme length is 7'25, the distance of 
the anterior edge of the occipital foramen from the glabella, mea- 
sured in the same way along the glabello-occipital line, is 3-8 ; of its 
postej'ior edge 5-3. The anterior edge is 1*1 vertically above the line, 
and the posterior edge I'O above it. Thus, in a length of 1'5, the 
occipital foramen has a slope of only O'l inch, so that, instead of being 
greatly inclined backwards, it is nearly horizontal. 
The skull from the Valley of the Trent belongs to a cranial type 
which seems at one time to have been widely distributed over the 
British Islands. I have seen skulls from rude stone tombs in Scot- 
land with similar characters, and others obtained from the Valley of 
the Thames. There are skulls in the Museum of the Eoyal College of 
Surgeons exhibiting like proportions, from the remarkable tumulus at 
Towyn-y-Capel, Anglesea, described by the Hon. VT. O. Stanley, M.P., 
in the ' Archjeological Journal ' (Institute) for 1846 ; and my friend 
Mr. Busk has shown me others from Cornwall. But the skulls 
which most clearly resemble the Trent cranium are some, also from 
river-beds, which I saw in the Museum of the B-oyal Irish Academy 
and in the collection at Trinity College, Dublin, and of which my 
friend, Dr. E. P. Wright, the curator of that collection, has been 
good enough to supply me with excellent casts. Two of these skulls 
are from the bed of the Nore, in Queen's County, and two from 
that of the Blackwater river, in Armagh, and one of the latter has 
the most extraordinary resemblance to the Trent skull, as the follow- 
ing table of measurements will show : — 
Trent. Blackwater. 
Maximum length 
Length of glabello-occipital line 
7-0 7-2 
6-7 70 
