118 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
exposure of the dentine as a result of use, is in accordance with the observations of many 
craniologists, that primitive man is much less subject to diseases of the teeth than man in 
a more civilized condition. 1 
Of the several peculiarities above described, some, such as the presence of an inter- 
parietal bone, a squamoso-frontal articulation in the pterion, a maxillo-frontal articulation 
in the inner wall of the orbit, a spheno-pterygoid foramen, and paramastoid processes 
are arrangements which are normal in various mammals though not in man. When 
they appear in the human cranium they are reversions to a lower type, and it is not 
without interest to consider if such reversions occur more commonly in savage than in 
civilised races. 
The one hundred and forty-three crania described in this Report were collected with- 
out any reference to individual anatomical peculiarities, but simply as the skulls of races 
of men, which happened to come in the way of myself and other collectors. But amongst 
them, although their number is certainly too limited to base any broad generalisation on, 
as to the relative frequency of occurrence of particular variations iji the different races, 
there is obviously a larger proportion of important variations than would occur in a 
corresponding number of skulls of the white races. Take the squamoso-frontal articula- 
tion, for example. It was seen in ten skulls, whilst epipteric bones were present in sixteen 
crania, which gives for the squamoso-frontal joint a proportion of 7 per cent., and for 
the epipteric bones a proportion of 11 per cent. This proportion is very much larger 
than was observed by Prof. Ranke in a series of two thousand four hundred and twenty- 
one crania of old Bavarian people, in which forty-three specimens had a complete articula- 
tion of the frontal with the squamoso-temporal, being in the proportion of 17 per cent. 
Virchow has added to Ranke's series of old Bavarian skulls observations on upwards of 
one thousand collected from other parts of Germany, so as to make a total of three 
thousand six hundred and ten German skulls, in 1*6 per cent, of which this articulation 
occurred. Calori also found this articulation in Italian skulls ten times in one thousand 
and eighteen specimens, or 1 per cent. Wenzel Gruber observed it in sixty crania in his 
collection of four thousand specimens. These crania represented different nationalities 
of Russia, and were probably for the most part Sclavonic, and the proportion is 1*5 
per cent. These observations give a proportion of something less than 2 per cent, of 
European crania in which the squamous-temporal articulated with the frontal. We have 
no correspondingly large observations on the coloured races, but the frequency with which 
this variation has been noticed in certain of them shows that it is not uncommon. I have 
already referred (p. 116) to Dr. Allen having seen it in twelve Negroes in the Morton 
collection, which, judging from Dr. Aitken Meigs's Catalogue, 2 contains one hundred and 
seventeen negro skulls. Ecker found it ten times in the series of fifty negro crania in 
1 See especially the remarks made by Prof. Eolleston in British Barrows, p. 701. 
2 Philadelphia, 1857. 
