Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/105

Rh day; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language, as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of such skulls.

'I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should some what less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size, and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls presented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby skull.

'That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram (fig. 6, p. 88), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measurements.

The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella, with the occipital protuberance.

The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of the skull to the occipital tuberosity.

From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side.

The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line.

The extreme longitudinal measurement.

The extreme transverse measurement.

'The question whether the Engis skull has rather the character of one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much disputed, but the following measurements of an English skull, noted in the catalogue of the Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian (see fig. 4) will serve to show that both sides may be right, and that cranial measurements alone afford no safe indication of race.