By William Long, Esq. -157 



To make shorter work of this most interesting subject, which 

 ought to be carefully studied in the two papers entitled " Principal 

 Forms of Ancient British and Gaulish Skulls/' and " On the Two 

 Forms of Ancient British Skulls/' both contributed by Dr. Thurnam 

 to the Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, the writer will 

 print two extracts from the former paper, which will give a general 

 sketch of Dr. Thurnam's views respecting the respective occupants 

 of the long and short barrows : — 



" The evidence before us appears to favour the conclusion, that 

 whilst in Britain the chambered long barrows were erected by a 

 dolichocephalous race, in Gaul such tombs were raised by a brachy- 

 cephalous as well as by a dolichocephalous one, though especially by 

 the former. Hence the inference, that the two races came into eon- 

 tact in Gaul at an earlier period than in Britain. In this country, 

 it has been shown that the evidence is in favour of the dolichocepha- 

 lous race having preceded the brachycephalous ; by whom it seems 

 to have been absorbed, or, as is less likely, extirpated. In Britain, 

 the remains of the brachycephalous Celtic race do not distinctly ap- 

 pear except in the circular tumuli, which are generally to be referred 

 to the ago of bronze ; whilst the chambered and other long barrows 

 of the stone age, so far as yet examined, always contain skeletons 



with crania of a dolichocephalic type In order to 



connect the dolichocephalic crania from the megalithic tombs of 

 the stone period in Britain, with those ot the Basques, and, 

 through them, with the ancient Iberians, we require to know 

 the form of the ancient Iberians' skull, as revealed to us by re- 

 searches in the most ancient tombs of Aquitania and Spain, and es- 

 pecially in the south of the Peninsula. ... So far as I have 

 been able to ascertain, the form of skull which prevails in the Pen- 

 insula, at the present day, is preponderatingly dolichocephalous, and 

 is thus strongly contrasted with the more cranial form of modern 

 France. . . . That the Iberian ^ race extended itself into Gaul, 



'Mr. Henry Lawes Long, in his work on the "Early Geography of 

 Western Europe," (1859, Keeve,) considers from the application of the 

 linguistic test, that no tribe of Iberic origin ever made a settlement in 

 Britain. From the central or Celtic division of Gaul, he thought that we might 



