UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 253 



would add that whilst this very striking difference is brought out 

 by taking the average length of the two sets of femora, a simple 

 inspection of the two sets of bones puts them into even sharper 

 contrast. The longer femora very often are also the stronger in a 

 most marked degree, and amongst them are to be seen bones with 

 muscular ridges, and processes indicating the possession by their 

 owners of strength far exceeding that usually observable in the 

 skeletons of the earlier race. In like manner other bones indicate 

 unmistakeably that the earlier was also the feebler folk as a whole, 

 though humeri and femora are forthcoming from long barrows 

 which show that men of great muscular power, even if not of great 

 stature, were not wanting amongst the British tribes of the long- 

 barrow period. In some cases the muscular ridges on the long- 

 barrow bones are so well developed on comparatively ill-developed 

 shafts as to suggest the idea of a poorly or only intermittently 

 well-fed population which was constantly worked hardly. The 

 large size of the deltoid ridge on some small humeri has suggested 

 the perhaps fanciful hypothesis that the owners of such bones had 

 been employed in lifting the stones of the huge barrows in which 

 they were found entombed. The linea aspera on the femora of the 

 British long barrows examined by me never attains the enormous 

 development which caused Professor Busk and Dr. Falconer to call 

 the femora from the Genista Cave at Gibraltar ' carinate ' (see 

 'Trans. Internat. Congress, Prehistoric Archaeology,' 1868, p. 160), 

 and which has suggested the name ' femur a colonne ' (Broca, 

 'Memoires sur les Ossemens des Eyzies,' pp. 14-21, Paris, 1868; 

 Topinard, 'Anthropologic,' p. 334, 1876) for similar femora from 

 early sepultures. In the absence of this peculiarity *, as also of the 



barrows which have been examined in Yorkshire are those described in ' British Bar- 

 rows ' from Rudstone, Ebberston, and Kepwick. The great majority of the statements 

 here made as to the characteristics of the dolichocephalic stock are based upon the 

 examination of skeletons of an unmixed race from the pre-metallic tumuli of 

 Gloucestershire. 



1 Topinajd has remarked, 1. c. p. 325 (if I am right in supposing that the word 

 'cranienne,' line 11 from top of page cited, stands by a misprint for the word 

 'ole'cranienne '), that the fluted femur is not found in the same collections of bones as 

 the perforated olecranic fossa. No humerus with such perforation was found in the 

 Genista Cave at Gibraltar, where so many carinate or fluted femora were found by 

 Messrs. Busk and Falconer. I should be slow however to think, as M. Topinard 

 does, that the presence or absence of one or other of these peculiarities indicates a 

 difference of race. As I have said in a detailed account (' Journ. Anthrop. Instit ,' 

 Oct. 1875, P- M9) of the Osteology of the long barrow at Nether Swell, I should agree 



