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far as they are accessible to me, and of all that has been written on the subject, I think it may be said :

That the Neanderthal skull exhibits the lowest type of human cranium at present known, so far as it presents certain pithecoid characters in a more exaggerated form than any other; but that, inasmuch as a complete series of gradations can be found, among recent human skulls, between it and the best developed forms, there is no ground for separating its possessor specifically, still less generically, from Homo sapiens. At present, we have no sufficient warranty for declaring it to be either the type of a distinct race, or a member of any existing one; nor do the anatomical characters of the skull justify any conclusion as to the age to which it belongs.

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Side view of the cast of the interior of the Neanderthal skull reduced to one half of the natural size. The outline represents the contour of a like cast of an Australian skull in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (No. 5331) reduced to the same scale. a. Cast of the inner face of the lambdoidal suture. Sy. the Sylvian fissure.

It seems difficult to believe that there now remains very much more to be said about the Neanderthal man's skull; but we owe to Professor Schaafhausen some interesting information respecting his brain.

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Represents the same objects as Fig. 2, viewed from above; scale the same. a a. as before.

Professor Schaafhausen, it appears, obtained Dr. Fuhlrott's permission to take a cast of the interior of the Neanderthal skull. Of the reproduction of the form of the cerebrum thus obtained, he says:

"There is a great resemblance to that of an Australian presented to the Society at the same time, so far as the slight development of the brain is concerned. The latter cast even presents somewhat better dimensions. The following is the result of the comparative measurement of the casts.

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M. Luce has made out that the weight of the European brain exceeds that of the Australian on the average by 300 grammes. As to dimensions, it is neither in length, nor in height, that the former considerably exceeds the latter, but in width. Thus this difference of the races is already manifest in the highest antiquity, when

Taken at the line which joins the anterior and the posterior lobes.

our countries were inhabited by men who, in intelligence, were on a level with the Australian savages of the present day."

I am indebted to Dr. Fuhlrott for what I presume to be a copy of the cast thus obtained by Professor Schaafhausen, and the accompanying woodcuts (Figs. 2 and 3) give two views of it, reduced to one half the natural size. With each view is represented the contour, under the same aspect, of the cast of the interior of one of those depressed Australian skulls in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, to which I have already referred. The resemblance between the two is at once seen to be very striking. The Australian rather exceeds the Neanderthal brain in length (7·1 inches to 6.85 inches), but, on the other hand, it is narrower at its widest part (5.3 inches to 5.45 inches), and the length of a vertical arch taken over the highest parts of the two casts from corresponding points on their lateral surfaces is slightly less in the Australian (9.3 inches to 9'6 inches). Again, the transverse contour, such as would be seen by viewing the casts from behind, is more pentagonal in the Australian, more evenly curved in the Neanderthal brain; and both the anterior and the posterior lobes are more flattened above and less rounded at their ends, in the Neanderthal cast. But all these differences sink into insignificance if compared with those which separate the Australian brain-cast in question, from others in the same collection.*

Thus, it appears to me, that the conclusion expressed in Prof. Schaafhausen's concluding paragraph is not borne out by facts, for the brain of the Neanderthal man is certainly not nearly so different from some Australian brains, as the extreme forms of Australian brains are from one another.

The "Crania Helvetica" of Professors Rütimeyer and His has come into my hands since the above was in type. Among the large series of ancient and modern crania figured in this elaborate and valuable work, I have only been able to find one which at all approaches the Neanderthal skull. It is that represented in the plate B. III, and is

*If, from the close resemblance of so much as can be reproduced of the cast of the Neanderthal skull to the corresponding part of the Australian, we may be permitted to conclude that the like similarity obtained in the missing portion of the former, the Neanderthal cranium must have had a much larger capacity than the minimum (75 c. i.) I ventured to assign to it; for the cast of the Australian skull displaces 87 cubic inches of water. The maximum capacity of Australian skulls given by Morton is only 83 cubic inches, while the minimum sinks to 63 cubic inches.

H.N.R.-1846.

2 G

derived from Berolles, Canton Vaud. Ascribed to the Burgundian period, it is regarded by Rütimeyer and His, as a "mixed form" between their Sion and Hohberg types, or, in other words, as CeltoRoman. This skull, however, does not come nearly so close to the Neanderthal cranium as some of the Borreby and some of the Australian skulls do.

LVII.-PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF London.

1. ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY (4, St. Martin's Place).
March 8th, 1864.

THE President of the Society, J. Lubbock, Esq., read a paper on "British Tumuli."-The paper was an elaborate analysis of the results of nearly 300 excavations into barrows made by Mr. Bateman, with the view to ascertain if there were any sufficient grounds for classifying British tumuli into similar periods of stone, bronze, and iron, and if so, what were the principal characteristics of the three Ages. The general result of this analysis is

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Commencing his analysis with the cases in which articles of iron were buried with the deceased, Mr. Lubbock finds these altogether 26 in number, the bodies in by far the greater number of which were extended. In respect to the Bronze Age, in the course of his researches Mr. Bateman met with 43 interments, accompanied by

bronze objects; but 6 of these belonged certainly to the Iron Age, leaving 37 which belong prima facie to the Bronze Age. In Denmark, according to the Scandinavian archæologists, the interments of this period were almost always by cremation, and the same appears to have been the case in Wiltshire; but in Derbyshire the reverse is the case, and only 10 were burnt, 15 being contracted, 4 extended, and 7 uncertain. So also it is the general opinion of the Danish archæologists, that stone implements were relinquished after the introduction of bronze; and, although Professor Nilsson has ably advocated the opposite opinion, and has brought forward several instances in which implements of bronze and of stone have been found together, these have been regarded as exceptional cases belonging to the period of transition. As far, however, as Mr. Bateman's researches go, they appear to confirm Prof. Nilsson's argument, since out of 37 Bronze Age interments, no less than 29, or more than three-fourths, contained objects of stone. Indeed, here, as elsewhere, the pierced axe hainmers are generally found in company with bronze weapons. The other objects of stone, however, show no improvement over those which are supposed to belong to the Stone Age. Coming now to those tombs which, containing stone and bone without any metal, may therefore be expected to represent the Stone Age, we have 134 cases. Of these the corpse was contracted in 53, burnt in 48, extended in 2, while in 32 the position was not determined. They were accompanied by pottery in 49 cases: 35 of them were certainly primary interments, 20 were evidently secondary, and the rest were more or less uncertain. It seemed to the author, however, very doubtful how far it is justifiable to refer these to the Stone Age. The absence of bronze, taken alone, is evidently insufficient to justify us in referring any given interment to the antemetallic period; in the first place, because, out of the 297 interments, 96 contained no implements either of stone or metal. No one, however, supposes for a moment that these indicated periods before the use of stone; and, in the same manner, therefore, the mere absence of bronze is not a proof that the interment belonged to antemetallic times. The remains of animals found with ancient human relics have acquired greatly increased interest since the admirable researches of the Danish and Swiss zoologico-archeologists, and especially of Steenstrup and Rutimeyer, by whose skilful cross-examination much valuable and unexpected evidence has been elicited from materials of most unpromising appearance. Much, however, as we

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