224 GENERAL REMARKS 



Facts of nearly equal generality and obviousness would be pre- 

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



a round or globular headed race, existed in that country in the earliest times, apparently 

 simultaneously. Examples of both races, but especially of the former, he thought were 

 still to be found among the modern Irish. The evidence before Sir William Wilde is 

 given at pp. 40, 228-232 of his ■ Beauties of the Boyne and Blackwater,' 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 views of Professor Nilsson which may be found 

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

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

 rather dolichocephalic, or perhaps more correctly cymbocephalic, 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 brachycephalic 



of Ketzius, 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 dolichocephalic and longer than the brachy- 

 cephalic' These views were expounded by him at greater length in the first 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 Wilson's 

 conclusion that the earliest race in Great Britain was eminently dolichocephalic, and 

 I would add exclusively so, all archaeological 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 dolichocephaly 

 to brachycephaly, which is taken for granted, and the gradual widening of the skull, 

 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 

 fur 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 Artificial 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 Journal,' vol. xviii. July, 1863, 

 p. 62 seqq. 



Still Professor Nilsson's views as to the priority of the brachycephalic 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 Principal 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 cranes de Solutre,' thus sums up the present state of opinion upon this ques- 

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

 cranes sont dolichocephales, et dans les gisements moins anciens qui ne remontent qu'a 

 l'age du renne, la dolichocephalic est encore la regie la plus generale ; quelques faits, il 

 est vrai, e'tablissent qu'k cette derniere epoque il y avait en outre une race au crane plus 

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



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



