294 GENERAL REMARKS 



There would be no repugnance felt even by men most strongly- 

 imbued with those feelings of exclusiveness which Professor Nilsson 

 (' Early Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' ed. Lubbock, p. 167, note) 

 assures us are eminently characteristic of savage life, for joint burial 

 with an equal, a relative, a friend, a wife or a favourite. The words 

 of the prophet of Bethel (1 Kings xiii. 31), ' Lay my bones beside 

 his bones/ show us, as do the repeated notices in the same history 

 of successive monarchs coming or not coming into the tombs of 

 their fathers, the Hebrew feeling on this point ; o-(paxOzlcra aw- 

 OanTtTcu 7(3 avhpi are the words used by Herodotus (v. 5) in de- 

 scribing the death and burial of the Scythian widow; Greek 

 sentiment has usually a distinctive beauty of its own, but the prayer 

 of Patroclus, II. xxiii. 8$, 84, 91, 



Mr) efxa a&v airdvevOe ri6r\ixzvai oare', 'AxiAAei), 

 'AM' ojjloVj a)S hpdcp-qfxev iv V[X€TepoL(TL hofioiaiv . . . 

 *I2s be /cat dorea v&'Cv tyiq cropos afxcfriKakvTiTOL, 



is not more Greek than it is Turanian or Semitic ; it expresses 

 merely the feeling common to all humanity that they who were 

 lovely and pleasant in their lives in their death should not be 

 divided. 



It still remains for me to put on record the little which I have 

 been able to note in the way of abnormalities, pathological and 

 other, in these prehistoric skeletons and skulls. 



Of the non-pathological abnormalities observable in this series 

 the persistence of the frontal suture is the only one which needs 

 special notice. It is exceedingly rare for this suture to remain 

 open in the earlier of the two series with which we have been 

 dealing, whilst it is by no means uncommon to find it retaining 

 its infantile patency after the coming of the brachycephalic 

 race. Dr. Thurnam, writing in 1865 ('Nat. Hist. Review,' April, 

 p. 245), said that of all the long-barrow skulls which he had 

 examined, four only, one from the chambered-barrow at West 

 Kennet, a second from the Rodmarton barrow (which has been 

 frequently figured, e.g. * Cran. Brit.,' pi. 59; ' Archaeologia,' xlii. 

 pi. xiv ; ' Thesaurus Craniorum,' p. 8), and two from the Dinnington 

 long barrow (described by me in the ' Journ. of Anat. and Phy./ iii. 

 1868, p. 254, Article XIII, p. 159), had been found possessing this 

 peculiarity. To this very small number I have, from all the 



