12 The Thirty-Fourth General Meeting. 
accepted by archeologists, and about the same time the volume on 
Prehistoric Times, by Sir John Lubbock, published in 1865, the 
excavations of Messrs. Lartet and Christy in the bone caves of 
France, and the treatises on the stone and bronze implements of 
Great Britain, by Dr. Evans, contributed to establish what had 
only been lightly touched by the earlier writers. Thurnam re- 
opened some of the barrows which had been examined by Hoare, 
and added greatly to the number by his own excavations. Sir 
Richard had abandoned his excavations in the long barrows as being 
very unproductive of relics of human workmanship, and, taking no 
notice of skeletons, he confessed himself unable to derive any 
satisfactory information from them or to determine the purpose for 
which they were constructed. Thurnam nuw showed that besides 
relics of the Stone Age the long barrows contained the bones of a 
particular race, small in stature, averaging not more than 5ft. 5°4in. 
in height, as computed by the measurement of the lony bones of 
twenty-five individuals. They had also the peculiarity of very long 
heads, the average breadth of which was in proportion to their 
lengths, as 71 to 100, a much longer head than that of any race 
now inhabiting Europe. On the other hand, the skeletons found in 
the round barrows he showed by a computation from the long bones 
of twenty-seven individuals, measured by himself and others, were 
those of a people of large stature, averaging 5ft. 8-4in. in height, 
or 3in, taller than the long barrow people, and having heads rounder 
than those of any people now inhabiting Europe, the proportion of 
breadth to length being as 81 to 100. Here, then, we have un- 
doubtedly one of the most important prehistoric discoveries of our 
time. By a comparison of the results of his excavations with the 
scanty notices of aborigines by ancient authors and the investigations 
of anthropologists into the physical characteristics of the existing 
races of man, Dr. Thurnam was able to show that these two kinds 
of skeletons represented two great primitive races of mankind. The 
tall round-headed skeletons were those of the Celts, a branch of the 
great nomadic race of the North, which all history records under 
various names and in innumerable tribes and nations, as having 
been constantly drifting westward from their original home in 
