660 GENERAL REMARKS 



ment of puberty by females than by males in our species, and the 

 earlier consequent consignment of the females, in savage varieties of 

 it, to the growth -arresting processes of child-bearing, and of hard 

 work on a frequently poor and intermittent supply of food. 



It has often been stated that in savage races the cubic capacity 

 of the skulls of the women makes a nearer approach to that of the 

 men than it does in modern civilised nations, and there is no doubt 

 that this has often been found to be so. But I have to repeat (see 

 p. 565 supra] that this is by jio means invariably the case, and that 

 in the long barrows, alike of Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, I have 

 found female adult crania which contrast with the male skulls by 

 their disproportionate smallness, almost, or altogether as forcibly 

 as do the clavicles or the long bones. Having taken up these diminu- 

 tive skulls myself, I can point out that they were found together with 

 other skulls, male and female, which differed from them greatly in 

 size, but in no way as to the archaeological surroundings ; and that 

 there is no reason for supposing, therefore, that their smaller size is 

 to be explained by reference to any inferiority of rank which among 

 savages has so often been observed to entail inferiority of bulk (see 

 British Association Report, Bristol Meeting, 1875, pp. 150-152). 

 We are prone, as I think, by a certain confusion of thought, to 

 imagine that savage life is as unvarying and monotonous, and as 

 little relieved by alternations, as is the ' dull grey life ' of the lowest 

 ranks of highly civilised communities, and that in consequence 

 greater uniformity of physical conformation is to be expected and 



or want of command of its comforts as well as some other peculiarities have caused 

 to be compared with the stone age inhabitants of this island, Dr. Barnard Davis gives 

 an average male stature of 5' 6", and an average female stature of 4' 11'5", measure- 

 ments showing a disproportion nearly identical with that which I have pointed out as 

 characterising the race we are here dealing with. The Amakosa Kaffirs of the Cape of 

 Good Hope have, I was assured by the late Sir A. Smith, an average stature of 5' 8'5" 

 for the males, as against one of 5' 0*5" for the females. On the other hand, amongst 

 the Eskimos, to whom, as to the Australians, these prehistoric races have been com- 

 pared, I do not find that a similar disproportion exists in the stature of the two sexes, 

 though Sir John Richardson (Polar Regions, 1861, p. 303) does speak of ' the dis- 

 comforts which age entails in savage life, especially on the weaker sex,' as having 

 made the old women ' frightfully ugly/ and ' the presence of a cheerful and pleasant- 

 looking old woman ' as c rare indeed among them/ The stature of the male Eskimo as 

 given by Peschel (Volkerkunde, p. 87), citing Beechey, is on an average 5' 5", and 

 exceeds that of the female by only 4". I must express my regret that Dr. Emil 

 Bessels should have been so unfortunate as to lose his measurements of the stature of 

 the Eskimos, whose ethnology owes so much to his interesting paper in the Archiv f iir 

 Anthropologie, viii. 1875, p. 109. The results of these measurements might perhaps 

 have given us a different average from that just quoted. A few additional references 

 to the significance of this disparity of stature in the sexes may be found in the 

 Archseologia, xlii. 1870, p. 457, and Journal Anth. Inst. Lond., Oct. 1875, p. 121. 



