256 BRITISH ETHNOLOGY v 



ment of Tacitus, or, more properly, according to 

 the information he had received from Agricola 

 and others, more similar to the Germans than the 

 latter. As to the distribution of these stocks, all 

 that is clear is, that the dark people were pre- 

 dominant in certain parts of the west of the 

 southern half of Britain, while the fair stock 

 appears to have furnished the chief elements of 

 the population elsewhere. 



No ancient writer troubled himself with mea- 

 suring skulls, and therefore there is no direct 

 evidence as to the cranial characters of the fair 

 and the dark stocks. The indirect evidence is not 

 very satisfactory. The tumuli of Britain of pre- 

 Roman date have yielded two extremely different 

 forms of skull, the one broad and the other long ; 

 and the same variety has been observed in the 

 skulls of the ancient Gauls. 1 The suggestion is 

 obvious that the one form of skull may have been 

 associated with the fair and the other with the 

 dark, complexion. But any conclusion of this 

 kind is at once checked by the reflection that the 

 extremes of long and short-headedness are to be 

 met with among the fair inhabitants of Germany 

 and of Scandinavia at the present day the south- 

 western Germans and the Swiss being markedly 

 broad-headed, while the Scandinavians are as 

 predominantly long-headed. 



1 See Dr. Thurnam " On the Two principal Forms of Ancient 

 British and Gaulish Skulls." 



