384 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIE fY OF TARIS. 



countries I shall content myself with mentioning the skulls of two Chellouhs, 

 inhabitants of the banks of the Nile, presented l)y M. Lagarde ; the two skulls 

 of Eed-skins, brought to us by M. Berchon ; the cranium of a Bechuana, sent 

 by M. Lautre, missionary in southern Africa; the Egyptian head, and the skull 

 of an Arab, which we owe to M. Perier; the curious deformed skull from the 

 valley of Ghovcl, (Central America,) which the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg 

 has contributed to our stores ; finally, and above all, the mogniticent head of an 

 Australian, conveyed to us by. Professor Ch. Martins. This last piece, so remarka- 

 ble in an osteological point of view, reveals to us a singular and heretofore 

 unknown trait of Australian manners. It is mummified ; all the flesh of the 

 head, desiccated and hardened to an extreme degree, is applied exactly to the 

 bones; the half-opened mouth is filled with bird's feathers ; a string strongly 

 knotted is passed through the cartilages of the nose. From what is known of 

 the customs of the Australian tribes it is impossible to suppose that this head 

 proceeds from a body embalnred or mummified by a methodical process. Every- 

 thing leads to the conclusion that it is a trophy of war, dried and preserved as a 

 memorial by the victor in some bloody afi'ray. 



A particular notice is due to two fine series of skulls collected in Syria by 

 M. Girard de Rialle, and at Alexandria by our regretted colleague, SchnejJ'. 

 The skulls from Alexandria date from the Greco-Roman epoch. The population 

 of that great city then presented a confused mixture of nearly all the races of the 

 ancient world. Hence the practiced eye of M. Pruner-bey has been able to 

 detect in the collection of M. Schnepf, besides the skulls of Egyptian race, a 

 still greater number of those of Greeks, Ilomans, Ligurians, Kegroes, and Syrians. 

 The skulls of the collection of M. Girard de Eialle are derived, some from 

 Damascus, the others from Rasheya. These last, to the number of 12, present 

 a surprising nniformity, and appear to have been artificially distorted l)y an 

 occipital compression. 



The European skulls presented have been too numerous to admit even of men- 

 tion. Most of theili are referable to the man of the prehistoric era, or to certain 

 existing populations which appear to be the issue of the primitive race of the age 

 of stone. The conquering races which introduced into Europe the Aryan lan- 

 guages and tlie use of metals did not destroy, as may have been supposed, the 

 vanquished nations, but, by mingling with them, caused them to undergo, almost 

 everywhere, modifications mor§ or less profound. Since that period new cross- 

 ings, many times superposed, have changed more and more the character of the 

 first races; now conquests, new migrations have, in some sort, transformed the 

 greater part of the populations of Europe, and, in the midst of this almost inex- 

 tricable intermixture, the exploration of ethnic origins has become one of the 

 most complicated problems of our science. To dissipate this uncertainty two 

 principal means lie open before us. These are, on the one hand, the study of 

 those i)opulations which, according to the testimony of linguistics, have more or 

 less resisted the foreign influence, and which, iu preserving their pre-Aryau lan- 

 guages, have doul)tless also preserved, iu a degree of relative purity, the typo of 

 the primitive races; and, on the other hand, the examination of the I'cmains 

 which the popuU^tions of the age of stone have left in the soil, at prehistoric 

 epochs whose succession has been determined by archeeology and palaeontology. 



The surviving witnesses of the primitive human fauna of Europe fonn now 

 only two groups, confined to the two extremities of that part of the world, and 

 resembling those summits still existing under the shape of islets in submerged 

 regions— they are the Basques and the Fins. Our distinguished colleague, M. 

 de Baer, thought that he had discovered among tlie Romans of the Rlietian Alps 

 a third group of primitive populations; but this opinion, already refuted bj^ MM. 

 His and Rutimeyer iu their Crania Helvetica, cannot sustain itself in presence of 

 the facts embodied iu the two important memoirs which M. His has addressed to 

 this Society. The brachycephalous population of the environs of Coire, far from 



