THE dens and caves of the earth are perpetually affecting the destinies of scientific induction by their revelations; our speculations in comparative anatomy are constantly indebted to the bones disentombed from those mysterious coffins of past ages; the popular interest in fossils dates from the interesting discoveries of the Kirkdale Cave; still more interesting because furnishing a key to the comparative anatomy of our own race; and the elucidation of the stages of our advance in civilization were the discoveries of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, its arrowheads, and pins for the fastening the savage skin, and its stone hatchet, and its round pieces of sandstone grit pierced like beads, and its boar-spear; and deeper still -and most interesting of all-the decayed skeleton-its skull still asserting the dignity of its ancient inhabitant, since Cuvier instantly pronounced it to be of the Caucasian race, evidently enough no go rilla or nest-building ape. The caves of Neanderthal seem likely to create a similar-nay, a deeper interest. Professor Schaaffhausen quotes from a letter of his friend, Dr. Fuhlrott, a description of this interesting cavern : "A small cave or grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about fifteen feet deep from the entrance, which is seven or eight feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about one hundred feet from the Düssel, and about sixty 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 almost perpendicularly into the river. It could *Natural History Review. Article on the Crania of the most Ancient Races of Man. By Professor D. SCHAAFFHAUSEN; with Remarks and Original Figures taken from a cast of the Neanderthal Cranium, by GEORGE BUSK, F.R.S. Williams and Norgate. Crania Americana: or, a Comparative View of the Skulls of various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. To which is prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species. Illustrated by seventy-eight Plates, and a Colored Map. By GEORGE MORTON, M.D. Philadelphia: John Pennington. THE SKULL.* be reached, though with difficulty, from above. The uneven floor was covered to a thickness of ly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. four or five feet with a deposit of mud, sparingIn 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 laborers 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 recognized as such by me, and placed in security. But, as the importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the laborers were very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; that fragments merely of the probably perfect and to this circumstance it may be attributed skeleton came into my possession." From this discovery, Dr. Schaaffhausen imagines that he reaches the following conclusions: "1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2d. 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 3dly. 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 in support of this assumption, nor consequently of their sotermed fossil condition, was afforded by the circumstances under which the bones were discovered." learned and suggestive paper has forcibly In some particulars, Dr. Schaaffhausen's reminded us or Sir Thomas Brown's Hydriotaphia; but the eloquent old Norwich physician descended into the subterranean world of buried urns and bones, to discover how surely man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths | Schaaffhausen says: "Nor should we be with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremo- justified in regarding the cranial conformnies of bravery, in the infamy of his na- ation as perhaps representing the most ture." Such is scarcely the impression savage primitive type of the buman race, produced by this most able and interest- since crania exist among living savages, ing paper; it is, he conceives, a step lower which, though not exhibiting such a redown into the vault of being from whence markable conformation of the forehead, we have emerged--the anatomist discov- which gives the skull somewhat the aspect ers in the chambers of that rare and cu- of that of the large apes, still, in other rerious skull a lamp, which lights us back- spects, as, for instance, in the greater depth ward; it makes the ground a little firmer of the temporal fosse, the crest-like tempoon which we advance to claim relation- ral ridges, and a generally less capacious ship with the illustrious ape family. "It cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage affords," says Mr. Busk, "a character in of development." which that skull approaches that of the gorilla or chimpanzee." Upon this discovery, and his inductions from it, Dr. Schaaffhausen has formed a succession of suggestions, which, if they have not the rich hearse-like pomp and magnificence, have yet the quaint and varied learning and solemn thoughtfulness of Sir Thomas Brown's urn burial. Scientific men are as much deluded by phantasmal resemblances and shadows, as even poets themselves. Not Robinson Crusoe, when he started to discover a footprint in the sand, was more surprised, nor did he follow the track more closely, or feel more clearly the assurance that he was upon the track of a man, than a comparative anatomist, when he lays his finger upon a rare skull. Dr. Schaaffhausen imagines he is upon the track of a new Man Friday, and believes that the cavern of Neanderthal supplies the sensible link to the long cloudy tracery of tradition floating over Europe, tending, he thinks, to establish the existence of a wonderful race of beings, form ing the bridge of communication between man and the ape. We speak with great respect; of such a paper, so full of rare and profoundly interesting scholarship, as the paper of Dr. Schauffhausen, it is only possible to speak with respect; but it is wonderful, truly, what a propensity there is in scientific men to quarter the arms of the great monkey family upon their hatchments. It must be admitted to be assuredly wonderful that distinguished anatomists like our author should even be disposed to permit a little special pleading-to indulge in a little hypothesis, if they can only by such be permitted to wear the bar sinister of their royal simiatic origin of species; the skull of Neanderthal being scarcely found sufficient to establish the honor of the gorilla cousinship. Dr. Since the day of Camper, anatomists. have attempted many methods for deter mining the worth of the mysterious in. habitant by accurately gauging the dimensions of the chambers of crania; the doctrine of the skull has been one of the most important problems of ethnological science. A popular elucidation, even for scientific minds, is still needed. The interest of the subject can not well be overstated. There can be no doubt that the weight and the measurement of the skull determine the presence or the absence of spiritual dynamical force in the race. If we were introduced into a museum of the crania of all nations and ages, it would, perhaps, be possible, from those silent, echoless, and ruined temples, to discover the great master builders-the advance guards-the road-makers of civilization. To carry the induction into detail would not be, perhaps, so easy. No doubt, in the caverns of the earth, we find ourselves brought into the presence of the autochthonic peoples, races long anticipating those whom we call aboriginal. The skull is to the mind what the ruined city, with its palaces and temples, is to the race. It is monumental, and no doubt it can be satisfactorily shown that the size and capacity of crania increases as the race improves. Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his Archwology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, has extorted this testimony from innumerable tumuli. The great stone ages preserve not only the works of the builders, but from the cemetery are also disentombed the innumerable skulls, enabling us to assign to tradition, in its rumors of vanished peoples, its proper measure of truth. Dr. Pritchard has assigned the broad faced pyramidal skull to the nomadic tribes, while the characteristic oval skull is ever the indication of the long settled and civilized people. The crania of the North-British tumuli, and, of rearing the vast Peruvian temples-the those of the Peruvian temples, furnish to mighty monuments of Tiaguanico and us the same evidence that those who rear- Titicaca. Mr. Pentland states that: ed those wondrous and interesting structures possessed alike the capacity for the practice of analogous arts. Indeed, there are not wanting indications of a likeness between the anatomical structures and conditions of the mysterious people discovered by the Spaniards in South America, and those whose remains were discov. ered beneath the grassy tumuli of Scot land. ered innumerable tombs, hundreds of which he "In the vicinity of Titicaca he has 'discoventered and examined. These monuments are of a grand species of design and architecture, resembling Cyclopean remains, and not unworthy of the arts of ancient Greece or Rome. They therefore betokened a high condition of civilization; but the most extraordinary fact the mortal remains of a race of men, of all ages, belonging to them, is their invariably containing from the earliest infancy to maturity and old age, the formation of whose crania seems to prove that they are an extinct race of natives who inhabited Upper Peru above a thousand years ago, and differing from any mortals now inhabiting our globe. The site is between the fourteenth and nineteenth degrees of south latitude, and the skulls found (of which specimens are both in London and Paris) are remarkable for their extreme extent behind the occipital foramen; for two thirds of the weight of the cerebral mass must have been deposited in this wonderfully elongated posterior chamber; and ed, the general appearance must have been raas the bones of the face were also much elongatther that of some of the ape family than of human beings. In the tombs, as in those of Egypt, parcels of grain were left beside the dead; and it was another singular circumstance that the maize or Indian corn so left, was different from any that now existed in the country.' The elucidation of the doctrine of the skull has been carried forward by anatomists to a very considerable extent, and, in some regions, under circumstances most favorable for the purposes of induction. Dr. Morton's magnificent and costly work is an illustration of this. Thus the tribe of the Atures at the sources of the Orinoco, among the forest solitudes, lies their most remarkable cemetery, in the most remote part of the valley, covered with a thick forest. In that shady and solitary spot, Humboldt found the cavern of Ataruipe. Opening itself there where the waters have scooped for themselves a hollow, that illustrious traveler discovered in the tomb of an extinct tribe, near six hundred skeletons, all well preserved, and so regularly placed that it would have been difficult to make an error in their number. Every skeleton reposes in a basket made of the petioles of the palm-tree. This cemetery must be comparatively recent where the bones of the Atures lie. Not so the moreil lustrious tomb of Pachacamac-the ruined temple of the sun, reserved for the use of the highest order of the Peruvians. Yet, reposing as this vast concourse of skeletons did amidst the grandeurs of the Peruvian temple, it has been doubted whether they were the "The preceding facts appear to establish two builders; tradition, and the evidence of a important propositions; first, that the primitive more aboriginal crania-most likely that Peruvians had attained to a considerable degree of the Toltecan-testify to even a remoter of civilization and refinement, so far at least as architect. The civilization of the Peru- architecture and sculpture may be adduced in vian is one of those marvels and mysteries evidence, long before the Incas appeared in their country; and secondly, that these primitive which can not be fathomed. They pos- Peruvians were the same people whose elongatsessed a civilization complete in its ordered and seemingly brutalized crania now arrest -graceful, yet Cyclopean; and the evidence of the crania beneath the architecture proclaims the character of the builder. What does the brutalized skull prove? A relationship to the gorilla or the ape, as Mr. Busk would have us believe. Yet eminent travelers have given to these very brutalized skulls the power "Mr. Pentland expresses his decided opinion that the extraordinary forms thus brought to the light of day after their long sojourn, could not be attributed to pressure, or any external force similar to that still employed by many American tribes; and adduced, in confirmation of this view, the opinions of Cuvier, of Gall, and of many other naturalists and anatomists. On these grounds he was of opinion that they constituted the population of these elevated regions before the arrival of the present Indian population, which in its physical characters, customs, etc., offers many analogies with the Asiatic population of the old world.' our attention; and it remains to inquire, whether these are the same people whom the Incas found in possession of Peru, or whether their nation and power were already extinct at that epoch ?" How many peoples have vanished from the earth? Even within the memory of the eldest men of the survivors of our generation, we find races perishing and | by Diodorus. St. Hieronymus states that, even passing away. Some quarters of our world seem only like a solemn museum, or ossuary, of lost races. Time, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, seems to have led his multitudes within the inclosure of the mountains, and there lie their bones -the dwarf and giant people, who live in legend and tradition. Who were the Jotunheim? who were the Atures? There seems abundant evidence scattered over the mounds, the tumuli, and burrows, and ruined temples of ancient ages, of people whose exact analogue we can not now find; yet these people leave behind them, as they vanish, proofs that they were men, and represented mankind. This was the distinguishing characteristic: apes and gorillas are not mathematicians and mechanics. Nature, indeed, "From scarped cliff and quarried stone, She cries a thousand types are gone! I care for nothing, all shall go." in Gaul, the Scoti had been seen eating human flesh. Tacitus relates with respect to the Fios, that they lived in a state of astonishing savageness, their food being wild herbs, their clothing skins, their arrow-heads made of bone; and that their children and old people had no other protection from the weather than wattled huts. Adam of Bremen relates that, so late as in the eleventh century, the so-termed Jotuni, the most ancient population of Scandinavia, dwelt in the mountains and forests, clad in the skins of animals, and uttering sounds more like the cries of wild beasts than human speech. Their conquest and extermination are celebrated in the poems of the Skalds. Isigonus of Nicæa, quoted by Pliny, says that a Scythian people dwelling ten days' journey northward from the Dnieper was addicted to cannibalism, drank out of human skulls, and carried the hairy scalps of the slain on their breast. As in the German traditions and tales, many traces of the mode of life of our ancestors have come down to us from heathen times, so also may the tradition respecting cannibalism, which, from Grimm's researches, though it appears as early as Homer in the the legends of the Fins, Tartars, and Germans, history of Polyphemus, is also widely diffused in have originated in the actual remembrance of that abominable practice." But in all these types there is the distinctive, visible, individuality of man. Thus, a skull the most brutalized, while it may be painful to contemplate, has its human character; but, brutalized All most interesting. But our readas it may be, it would be absurd to iden- ers will perhaps be startled to find that tify it with the mere animal. The skull fragments of crania from Schwaan and of man is the dome of thought; this al- Plau may not only "be assigned to a barways—and, at least, if it is not "the pal-barous, aboriginal people which inhabitace of the soul;" it is not a difference ed the north of Europe before the Germerely in the character of the skull, al-mani; and, as is proved by the discovthough there is that, or in the quality of the brain, though there is that; the essential difference is in the inhabitant. There is something truly amusing in the way in which Mr. Busk deals with the skull of Neanderthal. To Dr. Schaaff ery of similar remains at Minsk in Russia, and in the Neanderthal near Elberfield, must have been extensively spread, being allied, as may be presumed from the form of the skull, with the aboriginal populations of Briton, Ireland, and Scandinavia. Whilst at Schwaan the bones were and consequently are brought into reladeposited in a Germanic grave of stone, tion with the historical period; the bones hausen it becomes the key to a long and rich series of learned and interesting sug gestions as to the true Allophylian people of Europe. He pierces the recesses of Celtic graves, and the iron-mines of Melchin- from Plau, on the contrary, were meregen, from the Suabian Alps. This sugges- ly laid in the sand, together with impletive skull reminds him of, and seems to himments of bone of the rudest kind. The to be related to, "those Germans who terrified Cæsar's soldiers by the wild flashing of their eyes; and those Gauls, of whom Ammianus Marcellinus says, they are frightful from the wildness of their eyes." "But the ancient Britons and Irish, the Belgians, Fins, and Scythians, are described as of far more savage aspect. According to Strabo, the Irish were voracious cannibals, and consid ered it praiseworthy to eat the bodies of their parents; and they are noticed in similar terms Minsk skull, in like manner, was found in the human bones and the cranium from the sand of an ancient river-bed. But Wheth the Neanderthal exceed all the rest in they may still be regarded as the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe." All this may, perhaps, be admitted; but what will our readers think of Mr. Busk, when, upon this solitary skull, simply this and these floating traditions of cannibals and Jotunheim, he advances to his conclusion, that "the fact of the geological antiquity of man, or, to use other words, of his having been contemporary with extinct animals, whose remains are universally regarded by geologists as fossil, has been fully established," and from thence jumps immediately to the conclusion that these forefathers of the earth were immediately related to the gorilla and chimpanzee : "The natural extent of the frontal sinus, in cases where the superciliary borders are much elevated, is usually imperfectly indicated by an opening or depression, through which the frontal nerve passes; and this depression is very manifest, especially on the right side, in the fossil cranium, in which it is regarded by Professor Shaaffhausen, we believe erroneously, as indicative of an injury received during life. In the mature chimpanzee and gorilla, the supraorbital ridges are, as is well known, remarkably developed; in the former case, we are not aware that the enlargement is accompanied with any expansion of the frontal sinuses, which, in fact, do not exist in that age, but it is due simply to a protection of the margin of the orbit, which cavity is larger in proportion to the skull behind it than it is in the human subject, and is thus in accordance with the greater development of the face generally. In the old gorilla, on the other hand, although the bone itself is tion above the orbit, there are very large frontal enormously thickened in the monstrous projecsinuses. However this may be, the protuberance in question must be regarded as showing a very savage type; and, in the extent to which it exists in the Neanderthal cranium, in affords a character in which that skull approaches that of the gorilla and chimpanzee." amusing; but for the most amusing eviTruly the credulities of ignorance are dences of the flights of credulity, we have to turn to the achievements of speculative savans. After all that can be alleged in behalf of "our poor relations," it still remains true that the gorilla or the chimpanzee is but a disgusting and terrible beast; the lowest type of man, whatever may be his degradation - even the Fan tribe has that which gives fearful distinctness to his individuality. We do not hesitate to say that the skull, as a fossil, can teach us very little of man. It is, at the best, a house quite unfurnished and untenanted; it is robbed and reft of all the ornaments which were not only its chief beauty, but which were the characteristic indications of its inhabitant. We may deal with it inductively; but even then it is but a piece of mechanism thrown by. Psychology is assuredly needed to enable us to pronounce a verdict the skull needs to be informed. From Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. LOVE A REMONSTRANCE. LOVE should be nursed 'midst beauty-in a vale | Resistlessly the spirit glides away Enchanting its every thought control- Into that dream-land, whereof Love is king |