628 GENERAL REMARKS 



Facts of nearly equal generality and oLviousness would be pre- 

 sented in the observation of the comparative rarity of the inter- 

 given at pp. 40, 228-232 of his ' Beauties of the Boyiife and Blaekwater/ the second 

 edition of which was published in 1850. In this year Professor Daniel Wilson, in a 

 paper read before the British Association and published in the Transactions of the 

 Sections for 1850, p. 142, put forward the following statement as to the succession of 

 races in Scotland, in opposition to the \'iews of Professor Nilsson which may be found 

 in the British Association Eeport for 1847 at p. 31 : ' The earliest Scottish race difPered 

 entirely from the earliest Scandinavian race as described by Professor Nilsson, being 

 rather dolicho-cephalic, or perhaps more correctly cifmbo-cephalic, to adopt a term 

 which I venture to suggest as most appropriate to the peculiar boat-like shape of 



the crania The second race decidedly corresponds with the hrachy-ceplialic 



of Retzius, though in the few examples I have been able to obtain the cerebral develop- 

 ment appears considerably greater than in the primitive race of Scandinavia.' These 

 races Professor Daniel Wilson appears to have considered to be Preceltic ; and of the 

 ' true Celtic type,' he says, ' nearly all ethnologists are agreed in assigning to it an 

 intermediate form, shorter than the true dolicho-cephalic and longer than the brachy- 

 cephalic' These views were expounded by him at greater length in the fii'st edition 

 of his 'Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,' pp. 163-187, 695-696, which was published 

 next year; cit. Nott and Gliddon, ' Indigenous Races,' p. 293. With Professor W^ilson's 

 conclusion that the earliest race in Great Britain was eminently dolicho-cephalic, and 

 I would add exclusively so, all archajological anatomists are now agreed; and the 

 tendency to extend this conclusion to other regions of the world's surface is now so 

 strong as to have suggested a comparison between the progress from dolicho-cephaly 

 to brachy-cephaly, which is taken for granted, and the gradual widening of the skvdl 

 which, it is asserted, takes place between childhood and adult age in modern races. 

 See Schaafhausen, Urform menschl. Schadels, p. 5, 1868, or as cit. Welcker, Archiv 

 fiir Anthropologic, i. p. 151, 1866. 



Professor Wilson's views were adopted by Mr. Bateman in his ' Ten Years' Diggings,' 

 p. 147, published in 1861 ; and he himself reaffirmed them in his paper on ' Ethnical 

 Forms and Undesigned Ai-tilicial Distortions of the Human Crania,' published in the 

 Canadian Journal, No. xli. Sept. 1862, p. 41, and in his paper on ' Ancient British 

 Skull Forms,' published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Jom-nal, vol. xviii. July, 1863, 

 p. 62 seqq. 



Still Professor Nilsson's v^ews as to the priority of the brachy-cephalic races main- 

 tained their hold upon the beliefs of the great majority of at least continental anthro- 

 pologists until the publication of Dr. Thurnam's memoir on ' The Princii^al Forms of 

 Ancient British and Gaulish Skulls ' in 1865, in the Memoirs of the London Anthro- 

 pological Society. 



Professor Broca, Bull. Soc. Anth. Paris, ser. ii. torn. viii. 1873, p. 827, in his memoir 

 ' Sur les crc^nes de Solutrfe,' thus sums up the present state of opinion upon this ques- 

 tion : ' En effet dans les gisements les plus anciens de I'Europe occidentale, tous les 

 cranes sont dolicho-cephales, et dans les gisements moins anciens qui ne remontent qu'k 

 I'^ge du renne, la dolicho-cf'phalie est encore la rfegle la plus g^n^rale ; quelques faits, il 

 est vrai, etablissont qu'k cette deniiere epoqtie il y avait en outre un race au ci'ane plus 

 arrondi ; ' some Solutrb, like some Hungarian, skulls contravening this rule. 



I do not know what foundation there may be for the statement of Professor Canes- 

 trini, given by Mr. Darwin, ' Descent of Man,' p. 39, second edition, to the effect that 

 brachy-cephalic crania have been found in the Drift. The cranium from Olmo in the 

 valley of the Arno, supposed to belong to the post-pliocene age, was said to be brachy- 

 cephalic, but has been sho^\Ti by Professor Broca to have an index of 72'72, i.e. to 

 be distinctly dolicho-cephalic. See his Memoires, Tom. ii. p. 354, 1874. 



Professor Nilsson, in the third edition of his 'Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' 

 the first edition of which was published in 1838, says at p. 121 of the English transla- 

 tion, edited by Sir John Lubbock, 1868, ' Some isolated brachy-ceplialous crania have 



