Hell is paved with the skulls of priests.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! What ugly sights of death within mine eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks, Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon, Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea: Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems.
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man." -- Mark Twain
Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite's cell, furnished with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and skulls of dead men! This was much talked of, so that one of the elegant and malicious young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked: "Monsieur le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a grotto." He smiled, and introduced them instantly into this "grotto." They were well punished for their curiosity. The room was very simply furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly, like all furniture of that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see nothing remarkable about it, except two candlesticks of antique pattern which stood on the chimney-piece and appeared to be silver, "for they were hall-marked," an observation full of the type of wit of petty towns.
When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.
If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say--This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations, considered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.
So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other's rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the first hail is--"How many skulls?"--the same way that whalers hail--"How many barrels?" And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous likenesses.
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.
The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were horribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps, and, side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow; many wore women's headgear, others had baskets on their heads; hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooed designs could be descried; temples of Love, flaming hearts, Cupids; eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or three had a straw rope attached to the cross-bar of the dray, and suspended under them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be gnawing; it was bread which he was eating. There were no eyes there which were not either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades or skulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags were terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter.
On the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, and tears. This hearse contained a coffin covered with a white cloth over which spread a large black cross, like a huge corpse with drooping arms. A mourning-coach, in which could be seen a priest in his surplice, and a choir boy in his red cap, followed. Two undertaker's men in gray uniforms trimmed with black walked on the right and the left of the hearse. Behind it came an old man in the garments of a laborer, who limped along. The procession was going in the direction of the Vaugirard cemetery.
Crypts under parish churches are not very uncommon in England, but they are usually small and not characterized by any architectural beauty. A few of the earlier crypts, however, deserve notice. One of the earliest and most remarkable is that of the church of Lastingham near Pickering in Yorkshire, on the site of the monastery founded in 648 by Cedd, bishop of the East Saxons. The existing crypt, though exceedingly rude in structure, is of considerably later date than Bishop Cedd, forming part of the church erected by Abbot Stephen of Whitby in 1080, when he had been driven inland by the incursions of the northern pirates. This crypt is remarkable from its extending under the nave as well as the chancel of the upper church, the plan of which it accurately reproduces, with the exception of the westernmost bay. It forms a nave with side aisles of three bays, and an apsidal chancel, lighted by narrow deeply splayed slits. The roof of quadripartite vaulting is supported by four very dwarf thick cylindrical columns, the capitals of which and of the responds are clumsy imitations of classical work with rude volutes. Still more curious is the crypt beneath the chancel of the church of Repton in Derbyshire. This also consists of a centre and side aisles, divided by three arches on either side. The architectural character, however, is very different from that at Lastingham, and is in some respects almost unique, the piers being slender, and some of them of a singular spiral form, with a bead running in the sunken part of the spiral. Another very extensive and curious Norman crypt is that beneath the chancel of St Peter's-in-the-East at Oxford. This is five bays in length, the quadripartite vaulting being supported by eight low, somewhat slender, cylindrical columns with capitals bearing grotesque animal and human subjects. Its dimensions are 36 by 20 ft. and 10 ft. in height. This crypt has been commonly attributed to Grymboldt in the 9th century; but it is really not very early Norman. Under the church of St Mary-le-Bow in London there is an interesting Norman crypt not very dissimilar in character to that last described. Of a later date is the remarkably fine Early English crypt groined in stone, beneath the chancel of Hythe in Kent, containing a remarkable collection of skulls and bones, the history of which is quite uncertain. There is also a Decorated crypt beneath the chancel at Wimborne minster, and one of the same date beneath the southern chancel aisle at Grantham. Entry: A
The problem may be attacked from the opposite direction. How long would it have taken for the Indo-European stock to spread from its original home to its modern areas of occupation? Some recent writers say that it is unnecessary to carry the stock back farther than 2500 B.C.--a period when the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were already ancient. Wherever the original home was situated, this date is probably fixed too low. The discussion, moreover, is in danger not only of moving in one vicious circle but in two. (a) The term "Indo-European stock" necessarily implies race, but why might not the language have been from the earliest times at which we can trace it the language of a mixed race? (b) It is usual to assume that the Indo-European stock was tall and blond, in fact much as the classical writers describe the early Germans. But the truth of this hypothesis is much more difficult to demonstrate. In most countries known to the ancients where blond hair prevailed, at the present day dark or brown hair is much more in evidence. Moreover the colour of fair hair often varies from childhood to middle life, and the flaxen hair of youth is very frequently replaced by a much darker shade in the adult. It has been often pointed out that many of Homer's heroes are _xanthoi_, and it is frequently argued that [Greek: xanthos] means blond. This, however, is anything but certain, even when Vacher de Lapouge has collected all the passages in ancient writers which bear upon the subject. When Diodorus (v. 32) wishes to describe the children of the Galatae, by whom apparently he means the Germans, he says that their hair as children is generally _white_, but as they grow up it is assimilated to the colour of their fathers. The ethnological argument as to long-headed and short-headed races (dolichocephalic and brachycephalic) seems untrustworthy, because in countries described as dolichocephalic short skulls abound and vice versa. Moreover this classification, to which much more attention has been devoted than its inventor Retzius ever intended, is in itself unsatisfactory. The relation between the length and breadth of the head without consideration of the total size is clearly an unsatisfactory criterion. It is true that to the mathematician ¾ or 6/8 or 9/12 are of identical value, but, if it be also generally true that mental and physical energy are dependent on the size and weight of the brain, then the mere mathematical relation between length and breadth is of less importance than the size of the quantities. Anthropologists appear now to recognize this themselves. Entry: INDO
_Spaniels_ are heavily built dogs with short and very wide skulls rising suddenly at the eyes. The brain is relatively large and the intelligence high. The muzzle is short, the ears large and pendent, the limbs relatively short and heavy, and the coat thick and frequently long. It is supposed, from their name, that they are of Spanish origin. They may be divided into field spaniels, water spaniels and the smaller breeds kept as pets. Field spaniels are excellent shooting dogs, and are readily trained to give notice of the proximity of game. The Clumber, Sussex, Norfolk and Cocker breeds are the best established. The Clumber is long, low and heavy. It is silent when hunting, and has long ears shaped like vine leaves. The ground colour of the coat is white with yellow spots. The Sussex is a lighter, more noisy animal, with a wavy, golden coat. The Cockers are smaller spaniels, brown, or brown-and-white in the Welsh variety, black in the more common modern English form. The head is short, and the coat silky and wavy. Of the water spaniels the Irish breeds are best known. They are relatively large dogs, with broad splay feet, and silky oily coats. Entry: BOSTON
The Insectivora may be divided into two groups, according to the degree of development of the union between the two halves of the pelvis. The first group is characterized by the full development of this union, both pubis and ischium entering into the symphysis. The tympanum remains as a ring within an auditory bulla; the orbit is either surrounded by bone, or separated from the hinder part of the skull by a post-orbital process of the frontal; the upper molars have broad 5-cusped crowns with a W-shaped pattern; and the intestine is generally furnished with a caecum. The first family of this group is the _Tupaiidae_, represented by the tree-shrews, or tupaias, of the Indo-Malay countries, characterized by the complete bony ring round the eye-socket, the freedom of the fibula from the tibia in the hind-limb, and the absence of any marked elongation of the tarsus. The dental formula is _i._ 2/3, _c._ 1/1, _p._ 3/3, _m._ 3/3, total 38. In appearance and habits tree-shrews are extremely like squirrels, although they differ, of course, _in toto_ as regards their dentition. A large number of species are included as the typical genus _Tupaia_, which ranges from north-eastern India to the great Malay Islands. In these animals the tail has a fringe of long hairs on opposite sides throughout its length. In the pen-tailed, tree-shrew (_Ptilocercus lowii_), fig. 1, the only representative of its genus, and a native of Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, the fringes of long hair are confined to the terminal third of the tail. There are also differences in the skulls of the two genera. A third genus, _Urogale_, represented by _U. cylindrura_ of the mountains of Mindanao, in the Philippines, and _U. everetti_, of Borneo, has been established for the round-tailed tupaias, in which the tail is uniformly short-haired, and the second upper incisor and the lower canines are unusually large, the third lower incisor being proportionately small, and also erect, while the second upper incisor resembles a canine. (See TREE-SHREW.) Entry: INSECTIVORA
The undoubted "osseous remains" of pleistocene man are few. Burial was not practised, and the few bones found are for the most part those which have by mere chance been preserved in caves or rock-shelters. Of these the three chief "finds," in order of probable age, are the Trinil (Java) brain-cap, the lowest human skull yet described, characterized by depressed cranial arch, with a cephalic index of 70; the Neanderthal (Germany) skull, remarkable for its flat retreating curve with an index of 73-76; and the two nearly perfect skeletons found at Spy (Belgium), the skulls of which exhibit enormous brow ridges with cranial indices of 70 and 75. All these skulls, taken in conjunction with other well-authenticated human remains such as those found at La Naulette (Belgium), Shipka (Balkan Peninsula), Olmo (Italy), Predmert (Bohemia) and in Argentina and Brazil, make it possible to reconstruct anatomically the varying types of pleistocene man, and to establish the fact that in essential features the same primitive type has persisted through all time. The skeleton bones show differences so slight as to admit of pathological or other explanation. What Professor Kollmann says of man to-day was true in the remotest ages. Referring to Cuvier's statement that from a single bone it is possible to determine the very species to which an animal belongs, he says, "Precisely on this ground I have mainly concluded that the existence of several human species cannot be recognized, for we are unacquainted with a single tribe from a single bone of which we might with certainty determine to what species it belonged." Such differences as the bones exhibit are progressive modifications towards the higher neolithic and modern types, and are in themselves entirely incapable of supporting the theory that the owner of the Trinil skull, say, and the "man of Spy" belonged to separate species. All these "osseous remains" belong to the palaeolithic period, and from the cranial indices it is thus clear that palaeolithic man was long-headed. Neolithic man is, speaking generally, round-headed, and it has been urged that round-headedness is entirely synchronous with the neolithic age, and that the long-headed palaeolithic species of mankind gave place all at once to the round-headed neolithic species. The point thus raised involves the physiological as well as, indeed more than, the anatomical proofs of man's specific unity. Entry: 1
Views differ in regard to the best classification of the _Canidae_, some writers adopting a number of generic groups, while others consider that very few meet the needs of the case. In retaining the old genus _Canis_ in the wide sense, that is to say, inclusive of the foxes, Professor Max Weber is followed. The best cranial character by which the different members of the family may be distinguished is that in dogs, wolves and jackals the post-orbital process of the frontal bone is regularly smooth and convex above, with its extremity bent downwards, whereas in foxes the process is hollowed above, with its outer margin (particularly of the anterior border) somewhat raised. This modification coincides in the main with the division of the group into two parallel series, the Thooids or Lupine forms and Alopecoids or Vulpine forms, characterized by the presence of frontal air-sinuses in the former, which not only affects the external form but to a still greater degree the shape of the anterior part of the cranial cavity, and the absence of such sinuses in the latter. The pupil of the eye when contracted is round in most members of the first group, and vertically elliptical in the others, but more observations are required before this character can be absolutely relied upon. The form and length of the tail is often used for the purposes of classification, but its characters do not coincide with those of the cranium, as many of the South American _Canidae_ have the long bushy tails of foxes and the skulls of wolves. Entry: B
The ancient writers regarded as homogeneous all the fair-haired peoples dwelling north of the Alps, the Greeks terming them all _Keltoi_. Physically they fall into two loosely-divided groups, which shade off into each other. The first of these is restricted to north-western Europe, having its chief seat in Scandinavia. It is distinguished by a long head, a long face, a narrow aquiline nose, blue eyes, very light hair and great stature. Those are the peoples usually termed Teutonic by modern writers. The other group is marked by a round head, a broad face, a nose often rather broad and heavy, hazel-grey eyes, light chestnut hair; they are thick-set and of medium height. This race is often termed "Celtic" or "Alpine" from the fact of its occurrence all along the great mountain chain from south-west France, in Savoy, in Switzerland, the Po valley and Tirol, as well as in Auvergne, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, the Ardennes and the Vosges. It thus stands midway not only geographically but also in physical features between the "Teutonic" type of Scandinavian and the so-called "Mediterranean race" with its long head, long face, its rather broad nose, dark brown or black hair, dark eyes, and slender form of medium height. The "Alpine race" is commonly supposed to be Mongoloid in origin and to have come from Asia, the home of round-skulled races. But it is far more probable that they are the same in origin as the dark race south of them and the tall fair race north of them, and that the broadness of their skulls is simply due to their having been long domiciled in mountainous regions. Thus the "Celtic" ox (_Bos longifrons_), from remote ages the common type in the Alpine regions, is characterized by the height of its forehead above the orbits, by its highly-developed occipital region, and its small horns. Not only do animals change their physical characteristics in new environment, but modern peoples when settled in new surroundings for even one or two centuries, e.g. the American of New England and the Boer of South Africa, prove that man is no less readily affected by his surroundings. Entry: CELT
1. Caucasic or White Man is best divided, following Huxley, into (a) Xanthochroi or "fair whites" and (b) Melanochroi or "dark whites." (a) The first--tall, with almost colourless skin, blue or grey eyes, hair from straw colour to chestnut, and skulls varying as to proportionate width--are the prevalent inhabitants of Northern Europe, and the type may be traced into North Africa and eastward as far as India. On the south and west it mixes with that of the Melanochroi and on the north and east with that of the Mongoloids. (b) The "dark whites" differ from the fair whites in the darkening of the complexion to brownish and olive, and of the eyes and hair to black, while the stature is somewhat lower and the frame lighter. To this division belong a large part of those classed as Celts, and of the populations of Southern Europe, such as Spaniards, Greeks and Arabs, extending as far as India, while endless intermediate grades between the two white types testify to ages of intermingling. Besides these two main types, the Caucasic division of mankind has been held with much reason to include such aberrant types as the brown Polynesian races of the Eastern Pacific, Samoans, Hawaiians, Maoris, &c., the proto-Malay peoples of the Eastern archipelago, sometimes termed Indonesians, represented by the Dyaks of Borneo and the Battaks of Sumatra, the Todas of India and the Ainus of Japan. Entry: 1