the sexual differences in the skull are largely the result of the general physical differences is not to say that they are of no significance.
Jacobaeus of Copenhagen, who in 1709 wrote a book De distinguendis Cadaveribus per Crania, showed that there were some sexual differences in the skull. Soemmering (De corporis humani fabrica, 1794) considered that the head was relatively rather larger in women. Bichat (Anatomic descriptive, 1801) thought there was little sexual difference. Gall (Fonctions du CerveaUy 1822) stated that the antero-posterior diameter is longer in women, and the other diameters shorter. These statements are worth quoting as the opinions of the most distinguished Google 72 MAN AND WOMAN.
authorities of their time, but they were not founded on extensive and accurate data. Barnard Davis and Thurnam (Crania Britannica, 1856-65) seem to have been the first to recognise the necessity of always separating the sexes in cramometrical tables. Dureau ("Des caracteres sexuels du crane humaine," Revue d> Anthropologies 1873, t. "• PP* 475-4^7) gave an excellent summary of the history and data of the subject up to that date; and Mantegazza ("Dei caratteri sessuali del cranio umano," Arch, per VAntropologia, 1872, vol. ii. pp. 11 et seq.) gave a brief critical summary of the matter.
TYPICAL MALE SKULL {Poirter).
Panichi has shown by his observations on the skulls of children at Florence that sexual differences begin to be visible at the age of six, and that most of the chief sexual distinctions are fairly well marked before the age of twelve. 1 As to what the most constant 1 R. Panichi, " Ricerche di craniologia sessuale," Arch. i>erVAnirop. % Google THE HEAD.
73 sexual differences, taken comprehensively, are, it cannot be said that any two authorities are quite agreed, for each craniologist has his own preferences, and we have to bear in mind that sometimes a skull may be masculine in some of its characters, feminine in others; while a man's skull may approach a woman's in character, or (more frequently, in Mante- gazza's experience) a woman's skull may resemble TYriCAL female skull (Poirier).
a man's. There is no one constant sexual character in the skull, but there are a few characters which, when taken together, unmistakably indicate its sex. I will briefly state these, following, so far as possible, the opinions of four anthropologists belonging to different countries — Broca in France, Schaaffhausen in Germany, Mantegazza in Italy, and Turner in Google 74 MAN AND WOMAN.
Great Britain. 1 (i.) Perhaps the most prominent and distinctive of all the characteristics of the male human skull is the prominence of the glabella (or bony projection over the nose) and of the supraciliary ridges; that is to say, that men have overhanging brows which are little marked in women, while they do not exist in children; they develop at puberty and increase with age, and form a distinctly retrogressive character, being exaggerated in many lower races and to an extreme extent in the anthropoid apes. Associated with these bony prominences in men are large frontal air-sinuses which in women are much smaller. 2 (2.) In women certain bosses which are prominent in children have usually persisted to a more marked extent than in men; these are the parietal bosses at the outer and upper part of the back of the head and the frontal bosses half-way up the forehead over the eyes; in men these present the appearance of having been largely obliterated by the expansion of the skull (3.) All the muscular prominences are better marked in men, and the bones of the skull generally are thicker and stronger; thus the inion (the small occipital protuberance at the back of the head) is nearly always larger in men, as are the mastoid processes beneath the ear, which in children are very small. If a skull rests on its mastoid processes, Broca remarks, it is almost certainly a man's; the ridges on the skull for the attachment of muscles are also more marked in men. With regard to these three points it may be confidently said that there is very general agreement among anatomists. There are other sexual distinc- 1 Broca, Instructions craniologiques et craniomhriques; Schaaff- hausen, "Ueber die heutige Schadellehre," Correspondenzblatt deutsch. Gesell. Antkrop. % 1889, p. 165; Mantegazza, "Dei caratt. sess. del cranio," Arc h. per PAntrop.; Sir W. Turner, " Report on the Human Crania," Challenger Reports, Zoology -, vol. x.
a The frontal sinuses have recently been studied by Professor S. Bianchi, of Siena, " I seni frontali e le arcate sopraccigliari," Arckiv, per?Antrop. % 1892, Fasc. 2.
Google THE HEAD. 75 tions which seem to be fairly well marked but which are less obvious: thus in women the top of the head appears to be flatter, and at a more marked angle with the forehead, while in men the curve from before backwards is more smooth and even — a distinction insisted upon by Ecker and recognised by the Greek sculptors; women's skulls, also, in most races, are relatively shallower than those of men, in dependence on the greater flatness of the head; in women, again, while the base of the skull is usually smaller than in men, the arch of the skull, measured from the base of the nose to the occipital foramen, is often as large as in men.
These characters have not the same definiteness or constancy as the three characters first mentioned. The lowness of the female skull, which is accepted by Welcker, Weisbach, Ecker, Cleland, and Benedikt, seems to be due to the persistence in women of the infantile character of flatness of the roof; at birth the male and female skulls are of equal height, but the female skull in its adult shape lacks the final increments of height gained by the male. There are, however, many races among whom the skull is not lower in women than in men: such are the stone-age folk of the Homme-Mort Cavern (Broca), Auvergnats (Broca), New Caledonians (Broca), Negroes (Davis and Broca), Crania Helvetica (von Holder), Corsicans (Broca), Ancient Romans (Davis and Thurnam), Irish (Davis), Anglo- Saxons (Davis and Thurnam). The relation of the arch of the skull to its base (the direct line between the two ends of the arch) has been worked out for various races by Cleland in his interesting paper on "The Variations of the Human Skull," in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soc 9 1870. In infancy and childhood the base is very small compared to the arch; in women the base is almost always short, while the extent of the arch is in some instances as great as in the male. Comparing races, the Irish have the largest proportion of arch to base, the Chinese next. The short base line of women is therefore an infantile character, but on the other hand the longer base line of man is a savage character. "The most striking and altogether remarkable fact," as Cleland points out, "is that in uncivilised nations, while the length of the arch is very variable, the length of the base line is always great." Here, as is so often found, the infantile condition indicates the direction of evolu- tion.
Google y6 MAN AND WOMAN.
Cephalic Index. — A very great amount of study has been expended on the cephalic index, especially in regard to race and to sex. In regard to race, the great value of this index is unquestioned; in regard to sex, although the assertions of craniologists have been equally emphatic in opposite directions, its value is by no means so clear. This index, which was devised many years ago by Retzius and perfected by Broca, shows the relation of the breadth of the skull to its length; it is ascertained by multiplying the maximum transverse diameter by ioo, and dividing the result by the maximum antero-posterior diameter, certain precautions being observed in taking the measurements. A head or a skull of which the cephalic index is from 70 to 74 is (according to the international agreement of Frankfort, usually accepted in England) called dolichocephalic; from 75 to 79 it is called mesaticephalic; from 80 to 84 brachycephalic; below 70 it is hyperdolichocephalic; and above 84 it is hyperbrachycephalic. Therefore, the more an in- dividual is relatively broad-headed the higher is his cephalic index; while long-headed persons have a low cephalic index. A large number of distinguished anthropologists — De Quatrefages, Welcker, Broca, Calori — assert that in Europe women are more doli- chocephalic than men, that is to say, that women's heads tend to be rather longer or not so broad. But, on the other hand, other eminent anthropologists — Weisbach, Mantegazza, Hamy, Topinard — find that women are more brachycephalic than men. Crochley Clapham gives the measurements of nearly 2000 insane men and about the same number of insane women at Wakefield asylum; x he also examined a much smaller number of normal men and women; calculating the cephalic index from the figures given by Clapham, I find that for insane males it is 80.3, for insane females 80.1, for sane males 81.2, for sane 1 Art. " Head, Size and Shape of," in Diet, of Psychological Medicine.
Google THE HEAD. fj females 80.5; that is to say, that the sane are slightly more brachycephalic than the insane, and the men very slightly more brachycephalic than the women. The measurements of members of the British Associa- tion at Bath a few years ago showed that the men were very greatly more brachycephalic than the women; while 18.8 per cent of the women were dolicho- cephalic against only 12.1 per cent of the men, only 2.2 per cent of the women were hyperbrachycephalic against 9. 1 of the men. There is evidently a fallacy here, and I think it is to be found in the fact that unusual intellectual ability seems to be very frequently associated with brachycephalism, and a brachycephalic head has greater capacity than a dolichocephalic head of the same circumference; while the men would number a considerable proportion of individuals of marked ability, the women would more usually simply be the wives or relatives of the men.
If we turn to consider the cephalic index among human races generally, the discrepancy continues equally great Among the following the men are more brachycephalic than the women: — Parisians anterior to nineteenth century (Topinard), Auvergnats (Broca), Troglodytes of Loz&re (Broca), Papuans of New Guinea (Mantegazza), Admiralty Islanders (Turner), Italians of Bologna (Calori), Flemish (Houz£), Annamites (Mondi&re), Polynesians (Gavel), Letts (Wceber), Lapps (Mantegazza, Kharouzine), Ancient Britons (Davis), Bas Bretons (Broca), English (Davis), Ancient Romans (Davis), Basques (Broca), Modern Asiatic Greeks (Neophytos), Hindus (Davis), Greenlanders (Davis). Among the following, on the other hand, the women are more brachy- cephalic: — Berbers of Biskra (Topinard), Neolithic men of the Marne (Broca), Californians of Santa-Bar- bara(Carr.), Italians (Mantegazza), Andamans (Flower), Negroes (Broca, Huschke, and Davis), Tahitians (Deniker and Laloy), Australians (Flower), Papuans of Loyalty Islands {Crania Ethnica), Omahas Google 78 MAN AND WOMAN.
(Manouvrier), New Caledonians {Crania Ethnica), Ainos (Tarnetzky), Veddahs (Thomson), Finns (Retzius), Sardinians (d'Hercourt), Swiss (His), Irish (Davis), French (Sappey), Danish (Davis), Germans (Krause), Guanches (Broca), Chinese (Davis). 1 From these mixed and not always reliable data it is not obvious that any definite conclusion may be drawn, except that we note that while the first list contains a very large proportion of white races, the second con- tains a very large proportion of dark races. Even this, however, is not without interest, for there can be little doubt that the dolichocephalic skull is more primitive than the brachycephalic. Among savage and dark races generally dolichocephaly prevails; among the prehistoric races of Europe dolichocephaly prevailed to a greater extent than in the Europe of to-day, and the predominance of the brachycephalic is still increasing; 2 the higher age of the dolichocephalic races is suggested (as Virchow remarks) by the existence at both ends of the long continents of dolichocephalic races whose great age we must recognise; 8 the brains of brachycephalic men are decidedly larger than those of dolichocephalic men, as Calori has shown; 4 there is considerable reason to think that exceptional brain power is associated more easily with brachycephaly, and there is no doubt whatever that among the criminal, insane, and degenerate generally, while marked brachycephaly is sometimes found, dolichocephaly prevails to a greater extent and in a greater degree; 6 finally, some observers (Pruner Bey and Durand de Gros) found that brachycephaly tends to be associated with large pelves in women. 6 1 Topinard, Anthrop. Gin., pp. 376, 377; Morselli, Arch, per VAntrop., vol! v., and various other sources. 8 Topinard, V Homme dans la Nature, 189 1, p. 161. 8 R. Virchow, Crania Ethnica Americana, 1892.
4 Topinard, Anthrop. Gin., p. 568.
5 See, for instance, M. Benedikt, Kraniometrie und Kephalometrie, Vienna, 1888, p. 23; also Clapham, Art. " Head, Size and Shape of," Diet. Psych. Med.
6 Delaunay, Bull. Soc. d* Anthropologic, Paris, 5 Mars, 1885.
Google THE HEAD. 79 It must be added that the various series of measure- ments of the head of which the results have been briefly given are of very unequal value; they have been made by a variety of individuals and sometimes on very small series of subjects. It is probable that more extended investigation will give more har- monious results. It was the opinion of Broca, the greatest of French anthropologists — an opinion founded on extensive experience — that among the dark races women are more brachycephalic than men, although he found them less so among the existing races of Western France. 1 Virchow, the greatest of German anthropologists, in a study of the skulls of the aborigines on the west coast of America, found the women much more brachycephalic than the men; dolichocephaly and hyperdolichocephaly he found chiefly, and the latter almost exclusively, among men. 2 It will possibly be found that, in this as in some other matters, while on the whole men and women are side by side, there is a tendency for the women to be somewhat more ahead — in this case more brachycephalic — among uncivilised races, and for the balance to be restored by the men getting slightly more ahead among civilised races.
The matter will probably soon be settled by the careful study of children and of the changes they undergo in the course of growth. There is no doubt whatever that, while the course of evolution, irre- spective of sex, is from the dolichocephalic to the brachycephalic, children nearly everywhere are more brachycephalic than adults; this occurs in dolicho- cephalic as well as brachycephalic races, and even (as Danielli found among the Nias of Sumatra) when the mother is more dolichocephalic than the father. Thus, for example, Skoff found that for Russians the cephalic index presents its maximum in child- 9 R. Virchow, "Beitrage zur Craniologie der Insulaner von der Westkllste Nordamerikas," ZeitschriftfUr Eth., 1889, Heft 5.
Google 80 MAN AND WOMAN.
hood and diminishes with age, so that skull-growth is more especially in the antero-posterior direction; in adult Russian skulls Popow has found little difference in cephalic index. It is worth noting that in early life, on the whole, at all events among Europeans, girls are decidedly more brachycephalic than boys. Thus Mantegazza found by measuring nearly ioo boys and over ioo girls between the ages of 4 and 14, belonging to the poorer classes at Bologna, that while the average cephalic index in the boys was only 79.10, in the girls it was as high as 83.35; x it may be added that the index of the girls is almost the same as that of adult Bolognese men (as ascer- tained by Calori), the women being rather lower. It is noteworthy that while Clapham found the average cephalic index of his insane men to a small fractional extent greater than that of the women, below the age of twenty the index of the women was markedly higher (82.9 against 78.6), and this difference was chiefly due to defective antero-posterior development in the girls. Gerald West, who has measured over 3000 children between the ages of four and twenty- one in the schools of Worcester, U.S.A., finds that the maximum width of head is reached earlier in girls than in boys; that the index of girls during the period of growth is on the whole higher than that of boys; and that while the final index for girls is nearly the same as that reached at five years of age, the final index for boys is ij per cent below that attained at five years of age. 2 It is through such investigations that we may hope to learn more than we know at present concerning the significance of the cephalic index. It will be observed that the youthful brachycephaly of women is owing less to defective breadth than to defective length of the 1 Mantegazza, " Studii di Craniologia sessuale," Arch, per VAntrop., vol. v.
2 G. West, " The Growth of the Body, Head, and Face," Science, Google THE HEAD. 8 1 skull. This late antero-posterior growth is due, not so much to brain development as to the expansion of the air-sinuses in the frontal bone, which in childhood scarcely exist; if we were to measure the cephalic index within the skull, as Manouvrier points out, the brachycephaly of women would be increased. The opinion may be hazarded that if any sexual difference is ultimately found it will be in favour, on the whole, of the somewhat greater brachycephaly of women among the darker and more primitive races, and a possibly greater tendency to dolichocephaly among the fair and civilised European races. As the former races tend to be very dolichocephalic and the latter to be very brachycephalic, there is some foundation for Topinard's opinion that women tend to be less long-headed among long-headed peoples and less broad-headed among broad-headed peoples, so ap- proaching the typical average of humanity.
The Face. — It will be convenient here to consider briefly the generaf structure of the face. Speaking of the face generally, it must be said that its evolutional tendency is to become smaller while the skull becomes larger; the apes, as is specially obvious in the gorilla, have enormous faces compared to their small skulls; the human face, comparatively, is small; and woman's face compared to her relatively large head is usually stated to be smaller than man's; so that, as Soemmer- ing pointed out a century ago, while man is in this re- spect higher than the apes, woman is higher than man.
The evolution of the face from childhood to adult life has at present attracted singularly little attention, although it is full of interest. The only investigation with which I am acquainted, on a sufficiently large number of subjects, is that carried on at Worcester, U.S.A., by Professor West of Cambridge, Mass., on 3250 school children between the ages of five and twenty-one. 1 There seems to be a certain amount 1 " The Growth of the Face," Science, 3rd July 1891; " The Growth of the Body, Head, and Face," Science, 6th Jan. 1893.
6 Google 82 MAN AND WOMAN.
of parallelism between face-growth and stature- growth, both in the tendency to periods of retarda- tion of growth, in the temporary relative predomin- ance of girls at puberty, and the more continued growth in men. The evidence points to the exist- ence of three periods of growth, the first ending at about the seventh year, while the third begins at about the age of fifteen. Between the ages of eleven and thirteen girls approach boys in the diameter of the head, while in the diameter of the face at the age of twelve girls seem quite to reach boys. " In proportion to the length of head," West remarks, " the width of head and width of face of girls are generally greater than those of boys, and in propor- tion to the width of head the width of face is also greater in girls than in boys." It was found that while the face in girls ceases to grow at the age of seventeen, in boys it is still growing at eighteen, and probably continues to grow afterwards. These results seem to show that the generally accepted statement as to the relative smallness of the face in women may need modification; women's faces may be relatively broader than those of men, though at the same time, in accordance also with the impres- sion gained by observation, and, indeed, with the result obtained by Kollmann's facial index, they are relatively short, as in children. It must be added that Topinard's fronto-zygomatic index shows the relatively greater breadth of the face as compared to the breadth at the temples; the higher this index the broader the temples or the narrower the face, so that the highest indices are found in hydrocephalic heads; the index is higher in children than in adults, and is invariably higher in women than in men. 1 On casual inspection women's eyes seem to be generally larger and more prominent than men's. This effect is for the most part apparent only, and THE HEAD. 83 is due to a large extent to the over-arching of the bony ridges above the eyes in men. The races in whom this distinctively masculine character is deficient have an infantile or feminine appearance. But in addition to this the orbit in women has been shown to be about the same absolute height as in men, and therefore relatively higher. The eye itself has been shown by Priestley Smith to be at all ages very slightly larger in the horizontal diameter in men than in women, but the difference is extremely small, only about. 1 mill.
The Facial Angle, — This angle, which, speaking roughly, indicates the amount of protrusion of the upper jaw, has not — in the general neglect of the face in favour of that portion of the skull in con- tact with the brain — led to the general recognition of any sexual distinctions. This is very largely due to the very various ways in which craniologists have determined it. As, however, defined by certain in- vestigators, the facial index has some importance and has led to fairly clear results. Welcker (followed by a large number of craniologists) measured the facial angle by the degree of projection of the spine of the nose at its base as compared to the root of the nose. This index, in the hands of most observers, shows women to be more prognathous than men. Thus Benedikt, investigating this angle, found prognathism more marked in infants than in adults, and that while prognathism decreased with age (instead of, as among the lower animals, increasing with age) women remained slightly more prognathous than men, usually about half a degree. 1 Topinard considers that the most important of all the facial indices for indicating morphological rank is the alveolar-sub-nasal index, which in a somewhat different way also indicates the degree of protru- sion of the upper jaw. The investigation of this 84 MAN AND WOMAN.
index shows that prognathism is very much greater among lower than among higher races. Among Hottentots, for example, it is nearly 50; among English, French, and Germans, it oscillates around 20, while Mongols and Polynesians come midway. In every large Indo-European series women are more prognathous than men. Among Parisians, for example, from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, among Bretons, Auvergnats, Basques, Corsicans, as well as among ancient Egyptians and Javanese, women are markedly, and to a very considerable degree, more prognathous than men. But it is a curious fact that this is not so among the darker races in a lower stage of civilisation, nor does it appear to be so among the Chinese; among African negroes, Nubians and Bushmen, the women are markedly less prognathous than the men. 1 Women thus possess on the whole, at all events among European races, a well-marked alveolar prognathism. This, although a savage character, is far from being a defect; it frequently imparts, as Virchow remarks, a certain piquancy to a woman's face. Perhaps the naYve forward move- ment of slight prognathism in a woman suggests a face upturned to kiss; but in any case there is no doubt that while not a characteristic of high evolution it is distinctly charming.
When we investigate other forms of the facial angle, more especially those which show the projection of the upper part of the jaw in relation to the forehead, it is usually found that women are, if anything, less prognathous than men. These are, however, less characteristic and important varieties of the facial angle. It is possible to estimate the total prog- nathism of the face by taking the profile as a whole, with the inclusion of the lower jaw, and to measure the projection of the angle where the Google THE HEAD. 85 teeth meet This is measured by Camper's maxillary angle (quite distinct from Camper's facial angle), which takes as its apex the junction of the teeth, while the base is at the forehead and at the point of the chin. Topinard attaches great importance to this angle, almost as much importance indeed as to the mass of the brain or to the biped attitude, because it enables us to arrange many zoological species in their order of morphological evolution, as well as to classify the individuals within a species. The larger the maxillary angle the higher the degree of evolution. It is found that in women, both among the higher and the lower races, the maxillary angle is always markedly smaller than in men. The angle formed, therefore, by the whole face, supports the conclusion reached by the investigation of the alveolar region of the upper jaw, that women are somewhat more prognathous than men.
While prognathism of the lower part of the upper jaw must be regarded as a reminiscence of a more primitive age, the protrusion of the lower part of the lower jaw is a distinctively human character which is most marked in the highest European races. A reced- ing chin is a character of degeneracy and animality. In women the chin is usually less prominent In women also, as in children, the angles of the jaw are decidedly large.
On the other hand, women show a higher degree of evolution than men by the relatively smaller weight of their jaws, as has been shown by Morselli and Orchanski. The lower human races, as well as apes, have relatively large lower jaws, and the same tendency has often been found among criminals; but while woman's skull is to man's as 85 to 100, woman's jaw is to man's as only 79 to ioo. 1 The Teeth — It is rather surprising that very little attention has been given to the anthropological exam- 1 E. Morselli, " Sul Peso del Cranio e della Mandibula in Rapport col Sesso, " Arch, per PAn*rop. % 1876.
Google 86 MAN AND WOMAN.
ination of the teeth among European races, although it is a promising field and one where examination is comparatively easy. Professor Emil Schmidt, in his anthropological investigation of nearly 10,000 children in Saalfeld, had proposed to include an examination of the teeth, but as the measurements were entrusted to the teachers it is not surprising that this portion of the investigation led to nothing. A few anthropo- logists, Schaaffhausen and Flower for example, have reached interesting results, but dental surgeons, so far as I have been able to elicit by inquiries of some of the heads of the profession, have added little to our knowledge of sexual differences. Gorham, who weighed several thousand teeth, says nothing what- ever as to differences according to sex. 1 Among the lower as compared to the higher human races it is generally agreed that the teeth are larger and more regularly arranged, that the wisdom teeth resemble the other molars and are less cramped and not so frequently absent, while the dental arch is squarer and not so rounded as in the more civilised races. 2 There is also no doubt that among primitive races, whether of earlier or our own times, the upper jaw and palate exhibit fewer irregularities and malfor- mations, being usually extremely well formed and developed; it would also appear that among the higher and middle classes irregularities are of more frequent occurrence than among the working classes.