taken through the cheek bones, to the transverse diameter of the skull; in the more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof of the skull, and in the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened or projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck are inserted.
In some skulls the brain case may be said to be 'round' the extreme length not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than 100 to 80, while the difierence may be much less.[1] Men possessing such skulls were termed by Retzius 'brachycephalic,' and the skull of a Calmuck, of which a front and side view (reduced outline copies of which are given in figure 27) are depicted by Von Baer in his excellent "Crania selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. Other skulls, such as that of a Negro copied in fig. 28 from Mr. Busk's 'Crania typica,' have a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed 'oblong.' In this skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as 100 to not more than 67, and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this proportion. People having such skulls were called by Retzius 'dolichocephalic.'
The most cursory glance at the side views of these two skulls will suffice to prove that they differ, in another respect, to a very striking extent. The profile of the face of the Calmuck is almost vertical, the facial bones being thrown downwards and under the fore part of the skull. The profile of the face of the Negro, on the other hand, is singularly inclined, the front part of the jaws projecting far forward beyond the level of the fore part of the skull. In the former case the skull is said to be 'orthognathous'
- ↑ In no normal human skull does the breadth of the brain case exceed its length.
