138 
DR. J. CLELAND ON THE VARIATIONS OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 
a circumstance possibly connected with the length of base-line in these nations ; that is 
to say, that the length of the arch being completed before the length of the base-line, 
the extremities of the arch are possibly separated by continued opening-out of the mid- 
parietal angle in the latest growth of the base. The Kafir, Negro, and Australian all 
have the orbito-frontal angle large, the Kafir having it remarkably so. The Kafir, 
further, has the midfrontal angle flatter than the Negro, otherwise the curves of these 
skulls, as exhibited by angles, are very similar. 
In the Australians the curvature of the roof is very evenly distributed, as is indicated 
by the smaller than usual fronto-parietal angle in conjunction with the large midparietal 
angle ; the midoccipital angle is prominent. 
The two Kanaka skulls agree in presenting remarkable curvature both at the mid- 
parietal and occipito-parietal angles ; and in both, but especially in the male, a slope 
backwards is given to the whole skull by the small orbito-frontal angle and the flat mid- 
frontal, and the unusually flat angle at the occipital tuberosity. 
The Peruvian skulls are remarkable for the extreme flatness of the midfrontal and 
midoccipital angles, and extreme smallness of parietal and postforaminal angles. They 
have the orbito-frontal angle small. 
The Hindoo skulls have the fronto-parietal and midparietal angles small, the orbito- 
frontal rather small, and the midoccipital angle flat. 
The Greeks have the orbito-frontal angle large, the fronto-parietal small, the mid- 
occipital flat, and the postforaminal angle small. 
The size of the orbito-frontal angle in different nations appears to be a matter of suf- 
ficient importance to demand some further consideration. Among the loose notions 
which are popularly current about the form of the skull, and which have been with too 
little care incorporated among the beliefs of scientific men, and been allowed to assume 
among them a more definite and erroneous shape than they have in the unscientific mind, 
is one to which allusion has already been made, that amplitude of forehead is a criterion 
of high development both in individuals and nations, and that nations of inferior intel- 
lectual development have low or retreating foreheads. The unscientific man in express- 
ing such a notion considers nothing but external appearances, and his statements are not 
without a certain foundation of truth, for increased height and breadth of the whole 
cranium, and large proportion of arch to base are among the circumstances which may 
make the forehead well developed ; but when ethnologists go the length of imagining 
that in the lower types of humanity there is a local deficiency in the frontal part of the 
skull, giving room for only a small development of the anterior lobes of the brain, they 
fall into an anatomical error, as the measurements of most characteristic skulls will serve 
to show. It has been already shown that the Kafirs, Negroes, and Australians have a 
great development of the orbital length, and now we have occasion to observe that in 
these same skulls, but especially in the Kafir, the forehead springs very erectly from the 
orbit. This may be seen by a comparison with European skulls. 
In three Kafir males the average number of degrees of the orbito-frontal angle amounts 
