DR. J. CLELAXD OX THE VARIATIONS OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 
145 
We find certainly the Peruvian at one extremity of the series, and the Kafir, Negro, 
and Australian at the other, which seems a natural arrangement ; but the German skulls, 
placed next to the Peruvian, have no resemblance whatever to that form beyond the mere 
matter of proportional breadth, while on the other hand they have much resemblance to 
the Irish skulls which they are far separated from. The Kanaka, also, should come near 
the Peruvian rather than be associated with the Irish skulls, with which they have not 
the slightest affinity. The tendency of recent writers has been greatly to exaggerate the 
importance of breadth of skull as a distinguishing race character ; and while Aeby* would 
divide skulls according to their breadth into two great groups, the stenocephalous and 
the eurycephalous, other writers have likewise given an enormous importance to breadth 
by estimating dolichoceplialism and brachycephalism by nothing else than the “ cephalic 
index.” An inquiry into the origin of these terms may serve to show how objectionable 
this is. 
The point which mainly struck the attention of Retzius was that certain skulls 
had less development and posterior projection of the occipital bone than others, 
and on that account were shorter from before backwards than they; he therefore 
termed those skulls brachy cephalic, and others dolichocephalic. But to get a crite- 
rion of proportional length or shortness, it was necessary to select some measure with 
which to compare the length, and for this purpose Retzius selected the breadth ; but 
he does not appear to have based his statements with regard to the dolichocephalism 
or brachycephalism of different nations on detailed calculations of the proportion of 
breadth to length in individual skulls ; there is no evidence that he did so, and in 
his letter to Professor Duveknoy, in 1852, he expressly states that he does “not as 
yet wish to determine fixed measurements to distinguish them, but that ordinarily the 
longitudinal diameter of the dolichocephalous surpasses the breadth about a fourth, 
while in the brachyceplialous the difference varies between a fifth and an eighth. 
But the most distinctive characters are : ” he proceeds (the italics being his) ; and forth- 
with he lays down seven distinctions, not one of which is founded on the proportion of 
breadth to length, but of which the fifth consists in the height as compared with the 
length f. 
In the end of the same year, in his letter to Dr. Nicolucct, he enumerates nine 
distinctions, the first of which is that in the dolichocephalous skulls the longitudinal 
diameter surpasses the transverse by about one-fourth, while in brachyceplialous skulls 
it surpasses it by about one-fifth to one-eighth. Thus it appears plain that while M. Du- 
verxoy’s French taste for precision led Retzius into fixing certain proportions of length 
and breadth as characteristic of his two great classes of crania, Retzius never allowed 
himself to forget that the importance of his division lay in the classes being distinguished 
by a number of different characters, a circumstance well appreciated by the editor of his 
works, in his note on the letter to Dr. Nicolucci. But the effect of the subdivisions 
- Sehadelformen des Mensclicn und der Alien, noticed in Henle’s Berickt, 1867. 
f Etknologische Schril'ten von Anders Retzius, p. 118. 
