A piece of the occipital bone, which Schmerling seems to have missed,
has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished
anatomist, Dr. Spring, of Liege, under whose direction an excellent
plaster cast was made for Sir Charles Lyell. It is upon and from a
duplicate of that cast that my own observations and the accompanying
figures, the outlines of which are copied from very accurate Camera
lucida drawings, by my friend Mr. Busk, reduced to one-half of the
natural size, are made.
As Professor Schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed,
and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium,
consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the
occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is
entire or nearly so. The left temporal bone is wanting. Of the right
temporal, the parts in the immediate neighbourhood of the auditory
foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the squamous
element of the temporal are well preserved (Fig. 23).
The lines of fracture which remain between the coadjusted pieces of the
skull, and are faithfully displayed in Schmerling's figure, are readily
traceable in the cast. The sutures are also discernible, but the complex
disposition of their serrations, shown in the figure, is not obvious
in the cast. Though the ridges which give attachment to muscles are not
excessively prominent, they are well marked, and taken together with
the apparently well developed frontal sinuses, and the condition of the
sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the skull is that of an adult,
if not middle-aged man.
The extreme length of the skull is 7.7 inches. Its extreme breadth,
which corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal
protuberances, is not more than 5.4 inches. The proportion of the length
to the breadth is therefore very nearly as 100 to 70. If a line be drawn
from the point at which the brow curves in towards the root of the nose,
and which is called the 'glabella' ('a') (Fig. 23), to the occipital
protuberance ('b'), and the distance to the highest point of the arch of
the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found
to be 4.75 inches. Viewed from above, Fig. 24, A, the forehead presents
an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and
back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve.
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