UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 257 



owners an appearance of great feebleness during life. It has been 

 noted by Professor Busk in the skeletons from the Gibraltar caves 

 (see 'Trans. Internat. Congress, Prehist. Archaeology,' 1869, p. 158), 

 and I have noted it in every case in which the trunk bones have 

 been recovered from long barrows. It is as marked in the female 

 clavicles from the cremation long barrows of Market Weighton 

 and Crosby Garrett as in the non-cremation long barrows of 

 Gloucestershire. 



As regards the skeletons of the stone age which have been 

 examined in this country, the aphorism enunciated by Dr. Kuhff 

 ('Revue d 'Anthropologic/ iv. 3, 1875, p. 435) to the effect that 

 'plus Ton se rapproche des origines de l'homme, plus Ton voit 

 s'effacer les caracteres differentiels sexuels dans la squelette' appears 

 to me to be the very reverse of the actual state of the case, though 

 the skulls are not rarely subequal in the two sexes. The reason 

 for this disproportion * lies in the facts of the earlier attainment 



1 The greatest discrepancy in the stature of the two sexes recorded by Weisbaeh in 

 his measurements in the Anthropological part of the 'Voyage of the Novara' (1867, 

 p. 217) is that observed in the Javanese, where the males were found to average 

 1679 mm. = nearly 5' 6" in stature, as against 1461 mm. = nearly 4' 9-5" for the females. 

 The Rev. Richard Abbay, Fellow of Wadham College, tells me that the Javanese 

 women are put to very hard labour, carrying enormous weights upon their backs. 

 The philologist who may be inclined to explain the existence of Turanian or non- 

 Aryan traits in Welsh and Irish grammar, by supposing that these traits are the 

 result of the assimilation by bronze-importing Celts of the supposed non- Aryan tribes 

 of the stone age, may be interested in comparing the following account of the treat- 

 ment of the Mongolian female in modern days with the foregoing description of the 

 osteological characters of the female of our long-barrow period. The Rev. James 

 Gilmour, Medical Missionary at Peking, writes thus in the Eleventh Report of the 

 London Missionary Society's Hospital at Peking, 1875, p. 37: 'The women of 

 Mongolia are hardy and capable. They look ruddy and strong-limbed. They work 

 hard, and are badly treated. Woman's place in the tent is next the door ; the felt 

 she sleeps on is the thinnest and poorest. She does the milking and the drudgery 

 generally, and when she sits in the tent, usually has nothing better than a worn cow- 

 hide to protect her from the damp and cold of the ground. She jumps into the 

 saddle and rides over the plains as recklessly as a man. She takes little care of 

 herself, and has little care bestowed upon her. An old woman spoke some truth, at 

 least, when she said to me, "The women are treated like the dogs which are fed 

 outside the tent." The result is as might have been expected: strong, hardy and 

 healthy as the women look, almost every one who has passed the stage of girlhood 

 has some chronic malady or suffering. There are many exceptions, especially among 

 the richer class ; but as a rule, women suffer more, age sooner, and die younger than 

 the men ; and there is little prospect of a change for the better in this respect, till 

 women are treated more considerately, and have accorded to them a fair share of the 

 meagre comforts of tent-life.' Diodjrus Siculus, again (v. 39), after dwelling with 



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