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Show 128 of a fig. 23) are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression. Their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that I judge them to be due to large frontal sinuses. If a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance (a, b, fig. 23) be made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than 1 1 0th of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the auditory foramen(c) is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this upon the outer surface of the skull. A transverse line drawn from one auditory foramen to the other traverses, as usual, the forepart of the occipital foramen. The capacity of the interior of this fragmentary skull has not been ascertained. The history of the Human remains from the cavern in the Neanderthal may best be given in the words of their original describer, Dr. Schaaffhausen,* as translated by Mr. Buslr. ''In the early part of the year 1857, a human skeleton was discovered in a limestone cave in the Neanderthal, near llochdal, between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. Of this, however, I was unable to procure more than a plaster cast of the cranium, taken at Elberfeld, from which I drew up an account of its remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the 4th of February, 1857, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine Medical and Nat ural I-Iistory Society, at Bonn.t Subsequently Dr. Fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation of these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and into whose possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium from Elberfeld to Bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate anatomical • ON TllE CRANIA. oF TllE MOST ANCIENT RACES OF MAN. By Professor D. Schaatlbausen, of Bonn. (From Muller's Archiv., 1858, pp. 453.) With Remarks, and original Figures, taken from a Cast of the Neanderthal Cranium. By George Busk, F.R.S., &c. Natural IIistory Review, April, 1861. t Verhandl. d. Naturhist. Vereins der preuss. Rheinlando und Westpbalens., xiv. Bonn, 1857. 129 examination. At the General Meeting of the Natural History Society of Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia, at Bonn, on the 2nd of June, 1857,* Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a full account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which the discovery was made. He was of opinion that the bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming to this conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic deposits, with which their surface was covered, and which were first noticed upon them by Professor Mayer. To this communication I appended a brief report on the results of my anatomical examination of the bones. The conclusions at which I arrived were :-1st. rrhat the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers ; and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immigrants~ And 3rdly. That it was beyond doubt that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals of the diluvium still existed; but that no proof of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed fossil condition, was afforded by the cil'cumstances under which the bones were discovered. As Dr. Fuhlrott has not yet published his description of these circumstances, I borrow the following account of them from one of his letters. " A small cave or grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about 15 feet deep from the entrance, which is 7 or 8 feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about 100 feet from the Di.issel, and about 60 feet above the bottom of the valley. In its earlier and uninjured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front of it, and from which the rocky wall descended • Ib. Correspondenzblatt. No. 2. K |