Page:Natural History Review (1861).djvu/186

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174
ORIGINAL ARTICLES.

quire whether a similar conformation, or one approaching it, has been observed in other instances of ancient or modern skulls, but without success. He describes and figures a brachycephalic cranium from Plau (Pl. V., fig. 8), in which there is a considerable protuberance of the supra-orbital ridges, but not to anything like the extent of that presented in the Neanderthal skull. We have added figures taken from the cranium of a Red Indian, which was procured from an ancient burial-place in Tennessee, and in which, of all the crania in our possession, the supraorbital prominence is most marked (Pl. V., figs. 1 and 2). This skull also affords a striking instance of the existence of irregular depressions of the same nature as those which are seen, more especially on the right side, in the Neanderthal cranium.

To these figures we have also added others of some very ancient fossilized crania from different localities, with the view, simply, of showing that considerable diversities of form existed among even the earliest races of mankind inhabiting the West of Europe. These are: 1.[1] The figure of a cranium discovered in a submarine, or rather subterranean peat bog or forest, 30 feet below the present level of the sea, at Sennen, near the Land's End, Cornwall, for which we are indebted to Mr. Jonathan Couch, through the kindness of Prof. Wariugton Smyth. This cranium, it may be remarked, bears some resemblance to the Engis cranium of Dr. Schmerling.[2]

2. A cranium, probably of a female, found, together with less perfect skulls and numerous other bones belonging to six or seven individuals of different ages, from 60 or 70 down to 3 or 4 years, in a narrow fissure in a limestone quarry at Mewslade in Glamorganshire, and not improbably of the same period as the bones of animals, &c, found in the neighbouring caverns in Gower, which have been described by Dr. Falconer and others. This cranium is obviously of a wholly distinct type from that of the others, though still in some respects peculiar. In the Museum of the College of Surgeons are several crania taken from an ancient (British?) burial-place in Anglesea, in which the same conformation exists. And it also resembles very closely a cranium found deep in an ancient peat-bed in Northamptonshire, which has been placed in our hands by Mr. Prestwich, who regards it as belonging to a very remote period.

3. A small portion of another cranium,[3] found in a limestone quarry near Plymouth, at a depth of about six feet below the present turf, exhibits a different form; it is chiefly remarkable for the retreating forehead and the projection, without much thickening, of the supra- orbital ridges, the margin of the orbit being very acute.

4. In the human skull discovered by Dr. Schmerling in the Cavern of Engis, and which, we believe, is regarded by Sir Charles Lyell as undoubtedly cotemporary with the cave Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Carnivora, there is some reason, from the drawing of the longitudi-


  1. Pl. V., fig. 9.
  2. Pl. V., figs. 3, 4.
  3. Pl. V., fig. 6 and 7.