So far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural
varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. The ape-like
arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with* in the
white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among Negroes or
Australians: ([Footnote] *See an excellent Essay by Mr. Church on the
Myology of the Orang, in the 'Natural History Review', for 1861.) 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 fore-part of
the brain case, or forwards and upward in front of and beyond it. They
differ further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face,
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.
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