which is occasionally met with[1] in the white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among Negroes or Australians: nor because the brain of the Hottentot Venus was found to be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary Europeans, are we justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that conclusion may be.
We are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our own; and even of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time when Blumenbach and Camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of Natural History, and the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various writers, among whom the late active and able Retzius must always be the first named.
Human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in their absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but in the proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one another; in the relative size of the bones of the face (and more particularly of the jaws and teeth) as compared with those of the skull; in the degree to which the upper jaw (which is of course followed by the lower) is thrown backwards and downwards under the forepart of the brain case, or forwards and upwards in front of and beyond it. They differ further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face,
- ↑ See an excellent Essay by Mr. Church on the Myology of the Orang, in the Natural History Review, for 1861.
