BLAKE — ON THE CEANIA OF ANCIENT EACES. 
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 Nepal 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 
antiquity 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, ' Report on a Series of Nepalese Skulls.' Transactions of the British Asso- 
ciation, 1859. 
