

UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 645 



projected boldly forwards, not merely beyond the plane of the 

 forehead, but much beyond that of the prominent eyebrows them- 

 selves. In some cases, but not by any means in so many as 

 might a priori have been expected, the somewhat lengthy 

 upper jaw had its anterior or incisive segment projecting so 

 as to constitute alveolar prognathism, whilst the sockets of the 

 canines and those teeth themselves attained such a development 

 as to give a somewhat square appearance to the jaw when viewed 

 from in front. The lower jaw, which in every well-marked variety 

 of the human species contributes very importantly towards the 

 making up of its distinctive character, was in the brachy-cephalous 

 Briton usually a very different bone from the lower jaw of his 

 Silurian predecessor. Its chin was prominent, and contributed 

 a greater proportion to the entire depth of the bone in front 

 than the alveolar portion. Its ramus might not be thicker 

 and stouter than the ramus of the other variety with which 

 it is compared, but as the eye follows the lower line of two such 

 lower jaws along to their angle the superior strength of the later 

 type is made manifest, not merely by the muscular markings and 

 eversion of the angle, but by the much greater width of the entire 

 bone at this point. 



We may now pass from the brachy-cephalic British skull of the 

 bronze period, leaving some of its minor characteristics to be 

 gathered in the way of contrast from the ensuing general descrip- 

 tion of the dolicho-cephalic variety, and summing up the general 

 impression which an inspection of a series of such skulls makes 

 upon an observer by saying that it suggests the application of such 

 epithets as ' well-filled,' ' eurycephalic,' * sub-cubical; ' or when the 

 rounding-off effect of senile change has begun to tell, ' sub-sphe- 

 roidal ;' and finally of ' massive and powerful ' in an eminently 

 emphatic manner. 



When a considerable number of skulls from any one barrow of 

 the stone and bone period, such as those spoken of at pp. 539-541 

 supra, are arranged in a single line upon a long table along another 

 line of the surface of which a corresponding number of the brachy- 

 cephalic crania of the bronze period, and along a third a corre- 

 sponding number of Anglo-Saxon crania are similarly arranged, 

 the following remarks suggest themselves to the craniographer. 

 It might be said, firstly, that the two sets of pre-Saxon skulls were 

 well nigh as distinct and as sharply contrasted as any other sets 

 of skulls which it is possible to put alongside of each other from 



