70 Dr Prichard's Anniversary Address 



Association. There are some minor points of difference be- 

 tween these northern ethnologists, but the main principles of 

 their theory correspond. They mark two or three successive 

 periods in the population of Europe ; and they distinguish 

 the relics belonging to each by certain craniological charac- 

 ters, confirming the distinction and the ascription of differ- 

 ent degrees of antiquity to each by the modes of burial, the 

 situation and description of tombs, and the remains of art 

 found in them respectively. Professor Nilsson goes farther ; 

 he thinks that he has recognised a certain physical type in 

 human remains associated with certain organic relics of ani- 

 mals, indicative of an ancient date in the history of the globe. 

 The barbaric age of Scandinavia reaches back, according to 

 Professor Nilsson, to the era of extinct animals, and to a pe- 

 riod in which the surface of the earth was very different from 

 what it has been since the commencement of historic times. 

 Those ancient barbarians, the contemporaries perhaps of 

 mammoths and mastodonts,had skulls of a peculiar shape,and 

 these skulls are found only in sepulchres containing imple- 

 ments of the rudest kind, made of stone, flint, bone, with or- 

 naments of coral and amber. The ruder nations had, ac- 

 cording to Professor Retzius, heads of a rounder form, hav- 

 ing a shorter longitudinal diameter than those of the more 

 cultivated people of later times, in whose tombs are found 

 metallic implements, and ornaments indicative of greater ad- 

 vancement in arts. These last are the Dolicho-cephali or 

 long-headed people of Retzius. Such are the inferences 

 which very intelligent men have deduced from a survey of the 

 sepulchral remains of northern Europe. How far they will 

 accord with the results of similar researches in other coun- 

 tries we cannot as yet determine. 



The subject of human races, and their division in the popu- 

 lation of Europe, appears suddenly to have assumed an im- 

 portance in public attention, which there was heretofore no 

 reason to anticipate, since tribes and nations seem dis- 

 posed again to break themselves up, and divide according to 

 their races and languages. Races are made the ground- 

 work of political coalitions, and a difference in stock and 

 lineage becomes a plea for separation and hostility. If poll- 



