PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 269 



colonists of tlie north of Europe. Meanwhile, however, these data, and the con- 

 clusions derived from them, are produced chiefly with a view to induce more 

 extended research. A much greater accumulation of evidence is requisite lO 

 estahlish any absolute or certain conclusions ; and this can only be obtained by 

 a general interest in the inquiry leading to the observation of such, where the 

 resea.-clies of the archajologist, or the chance operations of the agriculturist 

 afford the desii*cd means."* To suggest the possibility of primitive races of 

 men, not of Celtic origin, having been the earlier occupants of Scotland, appeared, 

 in 1S50, a sufficiently daring extravagance. But the AntiquUes CcUkjucs et 

 AiUedUuriennes of M. li.,uclier de P<-rlhes, had juf-i. issued from the 1 i«inh 

 press ; and already, after so brief an interval, we read in familiar phraseology of 

 the prehistoric man of the Pfahlbauten of Switzerland and i'rance, or ot the 

 Orannoges of Ireland and Scotland, and the Kjokkenmiiddings of Denmark ; 

 and are no longer startled even to hear of the Flint-Folk of the pre-glacial 

 period, the contemporaries of the Eh phas pr mi genius and the Rhinoceros tirho- 

 rivus. In 1851, before this wonderful revolution in opinion had been broeght 

 about, my ideas on the prehistoric races of Scotland, and inferentially of Britain, 

 were set forth in greater detail ;t but still necessarily accompanied with expres- 

 sions of' regret at the inadequate data available for investigations on a subject 

 then altogether novel. Since then, however, the labors of intelligent students of 

 science have been rewarded by large and valuable additions to the materials 

 required for determining the questions dependent on craniological research ; and 

 special gratitude is due to Dr. J. Barnard Davis and Dr. Thurnam, who have 

 accomplished in their admirable Crania Britannica the same accumulation of 

 the requisite data for Britain which Dr. Morton had previously done for America. 



With the materials thus furnished for application to the purposes of the 

 ethnologist, the question has naturally been revived as to the true tyjdcal form 

 of the Celtic cranium, and the possibility of reconciling the existence of such 

 diverse forms as have already been referred to with the assumed aboriginal 

 character of the Celtse, and the assignment of all crania of an older date than 

 the Roman period to that race. Bes des the Saxon sktill, with its tribal vaiia- 

 tions, including, as Dr. J. B. Davis conceives, the peculiar low and broad Ibrm 

 to which he has given the name of platycephalic, there are, as already stated, 

 two forms, the one as much shorter as the other is longer and higher than the 

 average Saxon skull ; both of which, on the theory of a primary Celtic abori- 

 gines, must be included among varieties of the same ethnical group. 



If cranial conformation has any significance, it appears to me inconceivable 

 th;;t two such extreme forms can pertain to the same race; and the circumstances 

 under which the most characteristic examples of the opposite types have been 

 found, confirm me in the belief which 1 advocated when the evidence was much 

 less conclusive, that the older dolichocephalic or kumbecephalic skull illustrates 

 the physical characteristics of a race which preceded the advent of the Celia; in 

 Biilain, and gradually disappeared before their aggressions. As, however, the 

 opposite opinion is maintained by so iiigh an authority as Dr. J. Barnard Davis, 

 the comparison of the following measun ments, illustrative of the three types of 

 head, will best exhibit the amount of deviation in opposite directions from the 

 intermediate form. No. 1, like the majority of the same class, is derived from 

 a megalithic chambered barrow, and has been selected liy Dr. Davis as a char- 

 acteristic exnmple of the class to which it belongs ;| though, according to him, 

 that is one of aberrant deviation from the typical British form. No. 2, obtained 

 from a barrow at Codford, in Wiltshire, has also been selected by Dr. Davis as 



*Iiif/uirij into the Evidence of Primitive Races in Scotland prior to the Celtm. Report of 

 Biit. Assoc. J 850, p. 144. 



Ui rrlicBotogy and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. 



t Proceedings of the uicad. Nat. Sciences, Philadelptiia, 1857, p. 42. 



