164 
DE. J. CLELAND ON THE VARIATIONS OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 
The question of the beauty of a high or low forehead in the representation of feminine 
form receives elucidation from the principles laid down. The question is less one of 
taste than one of anatomy, for the just proportions of the head in the two sexes are 
as subject to law as those of the trunk. The child-like position of the feminine skull 
on the vertebral column, dependent on the lightness of the face, and on that deficient 
frontal capacity demonstrated by Huschke, combines with smallness of the postfora- 
minal angle to cause the continuance of other peculiarities of the young head, viz. an 
appearance of slenderness at the lower back part, and a rise of the roof as it passes back 
from the forehead. The kind of height of head required in the representation of femi- 
nine beauty is this rise of the roof, a result not of real height but of the position of 
the head on the vertebral column; the kind of height which is objectionable is height 
of the frontal eminences. There is probably no objection to the whole arch of the 
skull being represented high in the female ; but it is inconsistent with the greatest femi- 
nine grace to place the frontal eminences as high up and as far asunder as they are 
in the male, and to make the arch retreat horizontally backwards. It is established by 
Welcker, Weisbach, and Ecker* that the average height of the female cranium is less 
than that of the male ; and although the present measurements do not prove this state- 
ment, it is in all likelihood correct. Among the present measurements are several 
feminine skulls of markedly depressed form, such as do not occur in the male, and others 
which are not in the least depressed. Probably it may be correct to say that in conse- 
quence of the persistence in the female, as has been pointed out by Ecker, of the flatness 
of the roof found in childhood, the latest accession of height in the male skull is wanting 
in the female (p. 148), but that the mould of the female head in childhood may vary 
like the male. 
Further characteristics of a femininely shaped head have their origin in peculiarities 
pointed out in considering the angles in connexion with the arch, viz. the largeness of 
the orbito-frontal and fronto-parietal angles and the angle of the tuberosity, and the 
smallness of the frontal, parietal, and postforaminal angles. Among these character- 
istics those which affect the forehead and roof have been appreciated by Ecker. The 
difference in the general contour of the profile in male and female may be expressed by 
drawing a line to represent the male profile round a line representing the female, and 
making it touch the female profile at the midfrontal point, and in the region extending 
from the midparietal to the midoccipital point (see Plate XXI.). 
1Y. ANOMALOUS EOEMS OE SKULL. 
Unusual magnitude , Kephalon of Virchow. — The large skull 92, in the possession of 
Professor Thomson, appears to be a fair specimen of individual enlargement with preser- 
vation of shapeliness, and uncomplicated with hydrocephalus or any other pathological 
condition ; and the peculiarities about to be mentioned are probably most of them com- 
mon to the majority of cases of individual regular enlargement. The base-line has 
* Ecker, Anthropological Review, October 1868, p. 350, translated from the Archiv fiir Anthropologie. 
