by the discovery, about to be related, of skulls exhibiting a yet closer correspondence with it than do those already mentioned.
At the meeting of the Lower Rhine Society, on the 9th July, 1857, Herr Nöggerath stated that, in the Transactions of the Imperial Russian Mineralogical Society of St. Petersburgh, of the year 1842, an account was given by Dr. S. Kutorga, of two human skulls from the Government of Minsk, and that one of the skulls there figured presented a great similarity with that found in the Neanderthal. Both these skulls were discovered near Bobruysk. One was found in the sandy bottom of a hollow, apparently an ancient river-bed, in a locality where numerous human bones had been occasionally met with for a very long period; and tradition said that a town formerly stood there, which was destroyed by an inundation. Of this cranium only the frontal and two parietal bones remain. The frontal is strongly depressed, the supraorbital ridges, including the border of the orbit, form prominent elevations; the two halves of the frontal bone are unequal, and the sagittal suture manifestly flattened. Dr. Kutorga considers it very probable that this conformation was brought about by artificial compression; but the figure which he gives does not convey the decided characters of an artificial deformity. The other skull, taken from an ancient sepulchral mound in the same region, exhibits a well-developed forehead; but both the frontal and parietal bones are still more unsymmetrical than in the former skull. On the right side is a very well developed tuber frontale, which is wholly wanting on the left; the left parietal bone, also, is smaller than the right.
Shortly afterwards, in September, 1857, my attention was directed by Herr L. Lindenschmit to the cast of a frontal bone having exactly the same conformation, in the Romano-Teutonic Central Museum, at Mayence. This cast had been taken from a skull found near Plau, in Mecklenburg. At the meeting of the Association of German Naturalists and Physicians, at Bonn, in the same month, these peculiar cranial forms were exhibited in plaster casts, the difference between them and the crania of other lower races pointed out, and the opinion again expressed that this hitherto unknown form of skull probably belonged to a primitive race, settled in North Europe before the Germanic immigration. Having made application on the subject to Dr. Lisch, Keeper of the Archives in Schwerin, where the crania are preserved in the Grand Duke's collection, I was furnished with precise information respecting the discovery of the remains at Plau; and the portions of the skulls, together with similar relics found in Schwaan and other places in Mecklenburgh, were most readily sent to me. Thus were afforded the materials for a brief report upon the subject, which was read at the sitting of the Lower Rhine Society, held on the 3rd February, 1858.[1] The particulars are as follows:—A human skeleton in a squatting, or almost kneeling posture, together with implements made of bone, a battle-axe
- ↑ Verhandl. des naturh. Vereins des preuss. Rheinl. u. Westphal., 1858. xv.
