OCR Text |
Show 130 almost perpendicularly into the river. It could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. The uneven floor was covered to a thickness of 4 or 5 feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. In the removing of this deposit, the bones were discovered. The skull was first noticed, placed nearest to the entrance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the same horizontal plane. Of this I was assured, in the most positive terms, by two labourers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were questioned by me on the spot. At first no idea was entertained of the bones being human; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they were recognised as such by me, and placed in security. But, as the importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the labourers were very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and to this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably perfect skeleton came into my possession.'' "My anatomical examination of these bones afforded the following results :- The cranium is of unusual size, and of a long-elliptical form. A most remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses, owing to which the superciliary ridges, which coalesce completely in the middle, are rendered so pron1inent, that the frontal bone exhibits a considerable hollow or depression above, or 1·ather behind them, whilst a deep depression is also formed in the situation of the root of the nose. The forehead is narrow and low, though the middle and hinder portions of the cranial arch are well developed. Unfortunately, the fragment of the skull that has been preserved consists only of the portion situated above the roof of the orbits and the superior occipital ridges, which are greatly developed, and almost conjoined so as to fo1·m a horizontal eminence. It includes almost the whole of the frontal bone, both parietals, a small part of the squamous and the upper-third of the 131 occipital. The recently fractured surfaces show that the skull was broken at the time of its disinterment. The cavity holds 16,876 grains of water, whence its cubical con· tents may be estimated at 57.64 inches, or 1033.24 cubic centimetres. In making this estimation, the water is supposed to stand on a level with the orbital plate of the frontal, with the deepest notch in the squamous margin of the parietal, and with the superior semicircular ridges of the occipital. Estimated in dried millet-seed, the contents equalled 31 ounces, Prussian Apothecaries' weight. The semicircular . line indicating the upper boundary of the attachment of the temporal muscle, though not very strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the parietal bone. On the right superciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow or depression, indicative of an injury received during life.* The coronal and sagittal sutures are on the exterior nearly closed, and on the inside so completely ossified as to have left no traces whatever, whilst the lambdoidal remains quite open. The depressions for the Pacchionian glands are deep and numerouR; and there is an unusually deep vascular groove immediately behind the coronal suture, which, as it terminates in a foramen, no doubt transmitted a vena emissaria. The course of the frontal suture is indicated externally by a slight ridge; and where it joins the coronal, this ridge rises into a small protuberance. The course of the sagittal suture is grooved, and above the angle of the occipital bone the parietals are depressed. The length of the skull from the nasal process of the frontal over the vertex to the superior semicircular lines of the occi-mm. t pital measures . 303 ( . ~oo) = 12·0". * This, Mr. Busk has pointed out, is probably the notch for the frontal nerve. t The numbers in brackets arc those which I should assign to the clifferenf measures, as taken from the plnster cn~t.-G. B. K 2 |