Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/12

6 extends from the external angular process, arching backward, to the parietal.

On the inner surface of the frontal the "sulcus longitudinalis" is feebly and irregularly indicated where the inner table begins to project before being continued into a strongly developed "frontal crest," which terminates at its forward subsidence in a small "foramen cæcum."

The eminences and depressions indicative of cerebral convolutions are few and feebly indicated. Ramifications of the middle meningeal arteries are well impressed on the fore part of the inner table of the parietal. The portion of the occipital bone includes much of the right half of the lambdoidal suture with a strip of the so-connected parietal.

The "crista occipitalis," with both the superior and inferior curved lines or ridges, and the intervening spaces for the "complexi" and "rectus capitis postici" muscles, are strongly marked (Plate III. fig. 3), as is the bifurcation of the "inferior curved line," denoting the space for the "obliquus superior capitis" and the "rectus capitis posticus major" muscles. On the inner surface of the occipital bone the fossae for the hind lobe of the cerebrum and that for the cerebellum are well marked; but there is no depression answering to that noted as the "torcular Herophili" in modern European skulls.

The contraction and slope of the forehead and the prominence of the frontal sinuses are matched by low Australian and Andamanese skulls; but I have not found in these so definite a channel between the prominences. The depression between the frontal and nasal bones is nearly the same; but the nasals are narrower in the Australian skulls compared.