BLAKE — 05^ THE CRANIA OF ANCIENT RACES. 
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 AVest 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 wrere associated with the greatest 
differences of climate and situation. If a line be drawn from the 
centre of Russian 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 
Bussian 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 fade 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 between the dolichocephalic and 
brachycephalic conformation." The question was then raised " whe- 
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, oh 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 doliclio- 
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 Eugis skull, said to be " the 
oldest relic of man on record," exhibits a dolichocephalic type. So 
does the jSTeanderthal skull, " the lowest 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 
