122 RELIQUIAE AQTJ1TANICJE. 



skulls found in the megalithic monuments, and even in certain caves, the date of which, in his 

 opinion, has not been exactly established, or the floor of which he supposes to have been more or 

 less disturbed ; and as for the true Prekeltic aborigines, he seeks to prove that they all belong to 

 one race, which he terms the Mongoloid Brachycephales. In sustaining this opinion, he has many 

 a time had to appeal to ingenious hypotheses which could throw doubt on the value of the facts 

 quoted by those holding different opinions. Affairs were thus when the discovery of the skulls in 

 the Cro-Magnon Cave brought the question to a new phase. In this case the authenticity of the 

 date was so sure that it was not possible to deny the existence of a dolichocephalic race contem- 

 porary with the Mammoth, and far earlier, therefore, than the arrival of the Kelts. Unable then, 

 in the presence of such a fact, to maintain his general theory of the Mongoloid Brachycephales, 

 M. Pruner-Bey endeavours to prove that, if the Cro-Magnon people were not brachycephalic, 

 they were at least Mongoloid ; and as it would seem singular and contrary to all expectation 

 that a race of the Mongoloid type would be at the same time highly dolichocephalic, he has been 

 led to weaken this contradiction by referring the Cro-Magnon race to the modern Esthonians, 

 who, without being really dolichocephalic, have a longer head than all the other races who speak 

 the languages of the Mongolian group. 



Having discussed at length this hypothesis at the Meeting of the Anthropological Society, 

 July 18, 1868, 1 need not here reproduce the two large tables in which I compared the measure- 

 ments of the Cro-Magnon skulls with the Esthonian skulls in the Museum of Natural History ; 

 but I may add that in all points of view,, whether we consider the absolute dimensions of the 

 different parts of the cranium and of the face, or if we determine their relationships by the 

 percentage method whether we compare the individuals, or take the averages, there exist 

 between the Cro-Magnon and Esthonian races radical differences, as great as exist between any 

 two European races ancient or modern. 



