1914] on Some Portraits of Shakespeare and Burns 31 



England earlier than the age at which men began to replace their stone 

 weapons with implements made of bronze. In the Neolithic period 

 we have evidence that the " round-heads " were pushing their way 

 westwards through Central Europe towards the coasts of the North 

 Sea. In the Bronze period, commencing about 2000 B.C., they 

 began to arrive in Britain. They gradually permeated every part of 

 the country, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, but at no period 

 did they form the majority of our population. If 1 call those round- 

 headed people Celts, I use the term in the same sense as Continental 

 anthropologists do, as round-headed people speaking a Celtic tongue. 

 In England we speak of the Celtic fringe, and refer this fringe to the 

 people of Wales, the western parts of Scotland and of Ireland. The 

 majority of the inhabitants of these parts are long-headed people ; 

 they are permeated by a round-headed element added by the invaders 

 of the Bronze Age. The people of the western fringe represent, in 

 the main, the original long-headed stock of this country. At a later 

 date, in the Roman and Saxon periods, the additions made to our 

 population were of the long-headed type. 



Shakespeare is a descendant of the Bronze Age invaders, the true, 

 or round-headed Celts. That is a remarkable fact, for it is this 

 same short-headed stock, spread abroad in Central Europe, throughout 

 Germany, France and Italy, which has produced the world's finest 

 artists. 



Looking away for a minute from the question of type, it is of 

 interest to see what size of brain the Stratford bust suggests for 

 Shakespeare. If we accept the dimensions of the bust as real and 

 not enlarged, we must estimate the dimensions of the skull as follows : 

 length, 204 millimetres : width, 158 millimetres ; auricular height, 

 14:5 millimetres. Employing one of the formulaE! invented by 

 Miss Lee and Professor Pearson for estimating the size of the brain 

 from tlie dimensions of the skull, we find that Shakespeare's brain 

 cajoacity was a little over 1900 c.c. — not an impossible amount. 

 Cuvier's brain capacity was over 1900 c.c. ; Cromwell and Byron 

 are said to have had brain capacities well over 2000 c.c. The average 

 Englishman has to be content with a capacity of 1477 c.c. ; the 

 average Scot, according to Sir William Turner,* with one of a 

 cubic centimetre more. Scotland also had her invasion of round- 

 heads during the Bronze Age, and, as in England, the type still 

 persists, forming nearly 30 per cent of her population. Sir William 

 Turner noted that the people with the long heads had the larger 

 brains. He found that the mean capacity for short-headed Scots is 

 1469 c.c. ; for long-headed ones, 1516. The short-headed type has 

 the smaller brain. If we suppose, and I think we must accept the 

 proposition, that the Stratford head has to be reduced about 10 per 



* Craniology of the People of Scotland : Trans. Eoy. Soc. Edin., 1903, 

 vol. 40, p. 547. 



