258 GENEBAL BEMARKS 



of puberty by females than by males in our species, and the earlier 

 consequent consignment of the females, in savage varieties of it, to 

 the growth-arresting processes of child-bearing, and of hard work 

 on a frequently poor and intermittent supply of food. 



It has often been stated that in savage races the cubic capacity of 

 the skulls of the women makes a nearer approach to that of the men 

 than it does in modern civilised nations, and there is no doubt that 

 this has often been found to be so. But I have to repeat (see p. $6$ 

 of ' British Barrows ') that this is by no means invariably the case, 

 and that in the long barrows, alike of Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, 

 I have found female adult crania which contrast with the male skulls 

 by their disproportionate smallness, almost, or altogether as forcibly 

 as do the clavicles or the long bones. Having taken up these diminu- 

 tive skulls myself, I can point out that they were found together with 



emphasis on the hard life of the race which Vergil speaks of as 'assuetum malo 

 Ligurem,' says that the wives take an equal share with their husbands in all their toils 

 and endurances. The craniographer may object to the relevancy of these striking 

 passages, on the ground that the Mongolian are a brachycephalic and the long-barrow 

 folk, like the Basques, a dolichocephalic stock, To this the non -anatomical enquirer 

 might reply that the question was not one of human osteology, but of human motives 

 and behaviour ; but writing as a craniographer I will answer, firstly, that I have received 

 from Professor Eichwald a Tartar skull from Kazan with a cephalic index of 76, and 

 a very close general resemblance to the Eskimo type; and secondly, that most ethnogra- 

 phers are agreed, dolichocephaly notwithstanding, to consider this latter stock as un- 

 mistakeably Mongolian. For the Australians, whom their mode of life and command 

 or want of command of its comforts as well as some other peculiarities have caused 

 to be compared with the stone-age inhabitants of this island, Dr. Barnard Davis gives 

 an average male stature of 5' 6", and an average female stature of 4' 11-5", — measure- 

 ments showing a disproportion nearly identical with that which I have pointed out as 

 characterising the race we are here dealing with. The Amakosa Kaffirs of the Cape of 

 Good Hope have, I was assured by the late Sir A. Smith, an average stature of 5' 8-5" 

 for the males, as against one of 5' 0-5" for the females. On the other hand, amongst 

 the Eskimos, to whom, as to the Australians, these prehistoric races have been com- 

 pared, I do not find that a similar disproportion exists in the stature of the two sexes, 

 though Sir John Eichardson ('Polar Kegions,' 1861, p. 303) does speak of 'the dis- 

 comforls which age entails in savage life, especially on the weaker sex,' as having 

 made the old women ' frightfully ugly,' and ' the presence of a cheerful and pleasant- 

 looking old woman' as 'rare indeed among them.' The stature of the male Eskimo as 

 given by Peschel (' Volkerkunde,' p. 87), citing Beechey, is on an average 5' 5", and 

 exceeds that of the female by only 4". I must express my regret that Dr. Emil 

 Bezels should have been so unfortunate as to lose his measurements of the stature of 

 the Eskimos, whose ethnology owes so much to his interesting paper in the 'Archiv fiir 

 Anthropologic,' viii. 1875, p. 109. The results of these measurements might perhaps 

 have given us a different average from that just quoted. A few additional references 

 to the significance of this disparity of stature in the sexes may be found in the 

 •Archaeologia,' xlii. 1870, p. 457, and 'Journal Anth. Inst. Lond.,' Oct. 1875, p. 121. 





