148 
DE. J. CLELAND ON THE VARIATIONS OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 
breadth to length. The short-headed Americans, the Polynesians, the Hindoos, the 
New-Zealanders, and the Greeks may well be contrasted with the Germans, the Irish, 
the Australians, and the Negroes, the one set being high and the other low in proportion 
to their length : and if the division cannot be made distinct without the use of Greek 
nomenclature, the one group may be termed hyp selo cep h a lie , and the other tapeino- 
ceplialic. But the truest expression of the facts will be obtained by instituting a sub- 
division of the brachycephali of Retzius under the name of angustiores, to which shall 
belong the Hindoo, Sandwich-Islander, and New-Zealander, probably the Greek, and pos- 
sibly the Chinese. The mere establishment of such a division would set on permanent 
record that the brachycephali have more than one character. But whatever system of 
classification and nomenclature be determined on, it will always be artificial to associate 
with proportionally lofty skulls, like the brachycephalic Americans, low-lying skulls 
with dolichocephalic profile, such as the Germans, because they happen to have a 
cephalic index above 80°. These might be termed dolichocephali latiores. 
Position of greatest breadth (see the diagrams). — The position of greatest breadth in 
well-developed skulls is always near the squamous suture, usually towards the place 
where it descends posteriorly. In ill-filled savage skulls it lies a good w 7 ay up the pari- 
etal bone. By an ill-filled skull it is meant to express the condition of a mesial and two 
lateral ridges on the roof, with flatness of the adjacent surfaces. This ridged condition 
is a reversion, so far, to the infantile form, in which also the point of greatest breadth 
is placed high up ; but the infant soon loses the ridged condition, and in childhood the 
roof of the skull becomes flatter than it is in the adult*. Probably the point of greatest 
breadth descends at this period (as in skulls 14, 15, & 16), and afterwards reascends tem- 
porarily (as in 17 and 18) when the mesial part of the roof begins again to rise, then 
lastly descends a second time as the bones become more uniformly convex in the latest 
expansion of the brain ; for, as has been pointed out by Schaaffhausen j', breadth of skull 
goes on increasing up to adult age, although the permanent length is reached already at 
the seventh or tenth year. Possibly the rise in the roof after its flat condition in child- 
hood, as well as whatever temporary reascent there may be in the point of greatest 
breadth, may be explained thus, that the closure of the frontal suture, while the sagittal 
suture remains open, imposes a limit to the lateral expansion of the skull, and the inner 
margins of the parietal bones continuing to grow, at the same time that they are kept 
together by the connexions of the parietals with the frontal and occipital, and being 
pressed on by the growing brain below, are forced upwards and produce the mesial eleva- 
tion, partly by rotation of the parietal bones on their inferior margins, and partly also 
by unbending them, in which they are assisted by the continuing increase in the breadth 
of the base of the skull J. While these changes are taking place, and after they have 
* The persistence of this flatness in the female is referred to at p. 164. 
t Henle, Iyefferstein, und Meissner’s Bericht for 1865, p. 73. 
+ Professor Wyman in his recent “ Observations on Crania,” republished from the Proceedings of the Boston 
Society of Natural History, vol. xi., in writing about the much discussed variety of synostotic skull called sea- 
