UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 641 



In dealing- with a series of modern skulls we are not so dealing 

 with the skulls of the upper classes only; but ordinarily just the 

 reverse. 



This source of fallacy however does not vitiate the comparison 

 to be instituted between the tenants of the long barrows and the 

 more recent but still prehistoric tenants of the round ones. Indeed, 

 as regards the point of social superiority, the larger cubical bulk 

 of many of the long barrows relatively to the number of skeletons 

 contained in them would seem to indicate that the owners of 

 these skeletons had been during life, and indeed after it, in a 

 position to command more of the labour of their fellow-men than 

 the men of the bronze period. And there is no doubt that some 

 of the earlier, or indeed as the Les Eyzies skull, with a cubic 

 capacity of 100", reminds us, earliest skulls can compare favour- 

 ably with the very largest of the bronze or indeed of any other 

 age. Dr. Thurnam's measurements gave him an average of 98 

 cub. in. for the British brachy-cephali as against 99 cub. in. for 

 the older race ; and the largest prehistoric skull which I have 

 been able to cube was a woman's from the stone age excavations 

 at Cissbury ; see Journal of Anthrop. Institute, vol, vi. p. 35, 1876. 

 Nevertheless, with my unhappy knowledge of the very large 

 number of skulls from all prehistoric tumuli which are not re- 

 covered in a condition admitting of cubage, and for other reasons 

 to be gathered from what has been said above, I feel that the 

 result of the application of the method of averages to the question 

 of the relative cranial capacity of the two prehistoric races under 

 comparison is eminently unsatisfactory, as being eminently amenable 

 to the question, Ubi sunt ill'i qui perierint ? And I must express it 

 as my distinct conviction, that if we could have before us a more 

 faii'ly representative series of each of the two varieties of pre- 

 historic crania in question than their social habits and the wear 

 and waste of many centuries of lying in stony graves have left 

 us, we should find that the bronze brachy-cephali had been not 

 only the taller and stronger bodied, but also the larger skulled ^ 



intellect of the Nasqually chief from bis rank.' For further evidence as to one or other 

 of these lines of action see the Gottingen Rejiort of Zusamnienkunft einiger Anthro- 

 pologen in 1861, at p. 21; in the British Association Eeport for 1875, p. 150; Ftirster's 

 Observations, pp. 229, 410; Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 82, ii. 26; Tonr through 

 Hawaii, p. 7; Erskine's West Pacific, pp. 155, 240; Brencbley, Cruise of the Curacoa, 

 1873, p. 137 ; WTiitmee, Contemporary Review, Feb. 1873, p. 392 ; Journal Anthr. 

 Institute, vol. v. p. 127, Oct. 1875; Moseley, H. N., Hid. p 36, May 1877. 



' For the purposes of a comparison made upon such a basis it would be safe to take 

 the largeness of the skull as furnishing a measure of the largeness of the brain it 



Tt 



