UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 307 



tioned and compared with the similar cases given at p. 237 of the 

 second edition of the ' System of Dental Surgery' by J. Tomes and 

 C. S. Tomes. Another of the retention of a wisdom tooth, with its 

 upper surface only just visible above the alveolus in an aged 

 female skull, ' Cowlam, lvii. 3,' 'British Barrows,' p. 216, may be 

 mentioned as exemplifying another kind of retardation which is 

 perhaps more common among women than men, as is also, I incline 

 to think, the entire obsolescence of the wisdom teeth. 



The somewhat rare anomaly constituted by the presence of two 

 roots to the lower canine has been noted by me in lower jaws from 

 no less than five of the earlier interments treated of in this book ; 

 from, to wit, the long barrow ccxxix, at Nether Swell, described 

 by me in the ' Journal of the Anth. Inst./ Oct. 1875, vol. v (Article 

 XVIII) ; from the cremation long barrow at Ebberston (' British 

 Barrows/ p. 484) ; from the chambered long barrow at Rodmarton 

 ('Cran. Brit.' pi. 59); from the Dinnington 1 barrow, described by 

 me in the c Journ. of Anat. and Phys./ 1868, vol. iii. p. 254 (Article 

 XIII) ; and, fifthly, from the Longberry Cave, near Tenby, ex- 

 amined by Mr. Laws (see p. 305 supra). The importance of this, 

 which may appear to some readers to be a curious rather than a 



1 Some doubt may attach to the assignment of the Dinnington barrow to the long- 

 barrow period. I was not an eyewitness of the examination of it, though I, subse- 

 quently to the removal of it, made enquiries on the spot from persons concerned in 

 that work, and recorded them 1. c. Eighteen more or less perfect skulls had been 

 reinterred after the removal of the barrow ; these, through the kindness of J. C. 

 Athorpe, Esq., I recovered; they are all dolichocephalic, and measurements of them 

 were taken by Dr. Thurnam and recorded in the « Memoirs of the Anthropological 

 Society of London,' vol. i, and ' Crania Britannica,' tab. ii. p. 242. Casts of one of 

 these skulls have been taken and are referred to by Welcker, ' Archiv fur Anthropo- 

 logie,' i. 1, p. 149, and by Ecker, ibid. i. 2, p. 283, as illustrating well the 'Reihen- 

 graber ' form of the latter anthropologist ; and Dr. Barnard Davis has described 

 this cast in his ' Thesaurus Craniorum,' p. 1 o, as being ' very large, even enormous,' and 

 • subscaphocephalic.' I^may mention in support of the view, which however I do not 

 hold to be absolutely proved, that this barrow should take rank with those of the neolithic 

 age, the fact that out of twelve lower jaws recovered by me from the reinterment, no 

 less than six combine the wide ramus, the short coronoid, and shallow sigmoid notch 

 so characteristic of priscan jaws, with a rounded and slightly inverted angle ; whilst in 

 three of the other six the same rounding of the angle of the jaw is present with the 

 same inversion, sometimes considered peculiarly significant ; and that whilst in many 

 cases the chin has an eminently feeble, in none of them has it the powerful develop- 

 ment so common in the lower jaws of the later occupants of this country. 



For other references to this Dinnington barrow, see 4 Bulletin Soc. Anthrop. Paris,' 

 se*r. i. vol. v. pp. 541, 578 ; ' Natural History Review,' April, 1865, p. 245 ; ' Archaeo- 

 logia,' xlii. p. 171. 



X % 



