NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 41 



Like most, if not all the primitive people, they have manifested the great 

 principle inherent in the human mind, which incessantly animates an irrei)ressibly 

 longing hope and aspiration for a future life — one of those elements of man, 

 which more than any other bears irresistible evidence, both of his inherent 

 grandeur and superiority in the animal scale, and also, of the strict unity and 

 identity of his race — they have manifested this noble and sacred sentiment by a 

 scrupulous and elaborate care in preserving the dead ; to whom they even fur- 

 nished food, objects of adornment, weapons and companions also for the future 

 life they anticipated beyond the tomb. Their tombs, the Cromlechs, Barrows, 

 Cairns of the British Islands, notwithstanding the lapse of twenty, thirty or 

 more centuries, have remained until recent times scattered over the surface of 

 the country in various directions; and, it is evident, have been constructed with 

 such pains and skill as to have braved all the chances and changes of revolving 

 ages, until the arts of modern agriculture, or the inquisitive hand of man — alas ! 

 almost constantly a rude, uninstructc^d and ruthless hand — have unhearsed the 

 remains they have so faithfully preserved. 



These remains, which, as Sir Thomas Browne long since said, " have quietly 

 rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests," are capable of 

 teaching us something of the race to which they have belonged, andof recnlling 

 some of those physical features of which it is so unfortunate the ancients left 

 no full, faithful and permanent record, when they had the living people before 

 them. If we might not have expected from the martial spirit of Caesar an eth- 

 nography of the tribes who proved such stubborn obstacles to his ambition and 

 desire of conquest, there were those among his friends, who passed over 

 and remained with him in Britain, who had both the abilities and the op- 

 portunities to accomplish this task. The most illustrious of Roman orators, as 

 we learn from his invaluable Epistles, writing to his brother Quintus, who was 

 one of Ca.'sars companions in Britain, and even entertained the design, urges 

 upon him the composition of the work which we must ever lament the want of 

 — a Poem on the geography, the natural history, the ethnography — " mores et 

 gentes," the nations or tribes, and their manners and customs — as well as the 

 history of the war in which the great Roman general had been engaged with 

 them. It were in vain to lament the want of the curious information this work 

 would have imparted. We are now mainly reduced to the teachings of the 

 tomb, and in the language of M. L'Abbe Cochet, a learned French archicologist, 

 " dans le silence de I'histoire, le tombe est le meilleur document que Ton puisse 

 consulter pour connaitre la vie, les mreurs, et la religion de nos peres." 



The eleven fine lithographs of the skulls of the ancient Britons, which I trans- 

 mit to the Academy with this paper, have been executed from the crania them- 

 selves of the natural size, and with the greatest care and fidelity. They are 

 derived from Barrows in parts of England at considerable distances from each 

 other, — some from Yorkshire, which was inhabited by the tribe of the Brigantes 

 in the time of Ptolemy, about the year 120 of the Christian era, — some from Der- 

 byshire and Staflbrdsbire, the seats of the Coritani and Cornavii at the same 

 period, — one from Gloucestershire, the seat of the Dobuni, — and others from 

 Wiltshire, the country of the Atrebaiii in the days of Ptolemy. We cannot af- 

 firm that they have actually belonged to individuals of these tribes respectively, 

 as there are many chances which might render this doubtful. Wars, whether 

 intestine or foreign, and migrations, no doubt did their work of mutation in that 

 early time as they have done since ; and there is also the possibility, although 

 very remote, of their having belonged to prisoners, or to guests of neighboring 

 or remote tribes. But in the absence of all evidence to support these supposi- 

 tions, we cannot err much in appropriating them to the tribes in whose country 

 they were found. At least, there can be no question of their genuine Britannia 

 origin and derivation. This, as we shall perceive on closer examination is im- 

 pressed on every feature, and is now almost as cognizable as in the day in which 

 they were clothed with their fleshly lineaments. 



The study of skulls in general teaches us that among all races, although there 

 is a general resemblance running through the series belonging to a given race, 



1857.] 



