220 DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



Daniel Wilson as characteristic of the ' Insular Celt/ and called by 

 him ' pear-shaped ' or ' coffin-shaped.' 



Skulls, it may be said with truth, very closely similar to this 

 skull and to the Engis skull have, like it, been found in caves ; 

 three strikingly like them ; one from the mountain limestone 

 cave at Llanebie in Caermarthenshire, mentioned by Dr. Buckland, 

 Reliquiae Diluvianae, p. 166 1 , and filled with stalagmite; a second 

 from a cave at Cheddar ; and a third, presented by James Parker, 

 Esq., from a small cave at Uphill, near Weston-super-Mare ; all, of 

 considerable, though, as is often the case with other objects of the 

 same kind from the same sort of locality and deposit, of uncertain 

 antiquity, may be seen in the Oxford University Museum. But 

 very similar skulls are to be found in perfectly modern interments. 

 The Engis skull has been compared by its discoverer Professor 

 Schmerling 2 and by Professor Virchow 3 to ^Ethiopian skulls ; and 

 by other authorities to Eskimo and Australian skulls. Principal 

 Dawson 4 , F.R.S., of McGill College, Canada, remarked to me of a 

 skull of the dolichocephalic variety of the Red Indian race and of 

 the Iroquet tribe from Hochelaga near Montreal, that it resembled 

 the Engis cranium, and as this cranium has been presented to the 

 Oxford University Museum it is available there for comparison with 

 a cast of that famous calvaria. Resemblances so strong as are some 

 of these should, since they are also so widely scattered over the globe, 

 make us careful in speaking as to the ethnographical affinities of 

 any calvariae, or even, inasmuch as the absence or presence of 

 prognathism varies a good deal within the limits of a single race, of 

 skulls, until we have a very considerable number of representatives 

 of both objects of comparison to place alongside of each other ; and 

 it may be added until we have also succeeded in bringing other 

 lines of evidence from archaeology, philology, and, when available, 

 history, to bear upon the question 5 . 



1 An account of this cave, with a figure, may be found in Mr. L. W. Dillwyn's 

 'History of Swansea,' p. 52, and may be advantageously compared with M. Dupont's 

 similar discovery near Grendon, recorded at p. 229 of his work, cit. p. 537 of 'British 

 Barrows.' 



2 • Recherches sur les ossements fossiles de'cou verts dans les Cavern es de la Province de 

 Liege,' p. 59 seqq., 1833. Cit. Professor Huxley, ' Man's Place in Nature,' p. 121, 1863. 



3 ' Archiv fur Anthr.,' vol. vi. p. 92, 1873. 



4 ' Canadian Naturalist,' vol. v. No. 6, Dec. i860. 



5 [The Editor described ('Quart. Journ. Science,' April, 1864) a skull from St. AcheuiL, 

 near Amiens, which closely resembled in form and proportions the Engis cranium.] 



