356 ON THE PEOPLE OF THE LONG-BARROW PERIOD. 



portion in the size of the entire body observable among" certain 

 savages of either sex, do exist, they do not come into play ordinarily 

 till after the age of fourteen, when the skull and its contents are 

 incomparably nearer to their full size than the weight and size 

 of the body are to their adult measurements ; and it is obvious, 

 therefore, that neither in civilised nor in savage life is there any 

 a priori improbability that the brain and skulls of the two sexes 

 should be at least sub-equal, however widely their entire body- 

 weights may differ. 



The female skulls labelled ' Swell i. a,' and ' Swell vi. 2, 2,' show, 

 by their measurements given below, that some, at least, of the 

 women of the Neolithic period, in Gloucestershire, stood in the 

 same favourable relation of cranial capacity, as to the men of that 

 time, as that which Broca has recorded on behalf of the women of 

 the Caverne de l'Homme Mort, whilst the other bones from these 

 barrows speak to the existence of opposite relations between the 

 trunks and limbs of the two sexes. On the other hand, another 

 female skull, ' Swell i. i, 22-9-1874,' presents an inferiority of 

 size as compared with the male skulls and the other female skull 

 found in the same barrow and in its immediate vicinity, which may 

 be expressed more clearly than by its detailed measurements, by 

 saying that, previously to the restoration of the larger female skull, 

 1 Swell i. a,' this smaller one could be got into its interior. This 

 shows that as great differences might exist in savage races between 

 the skulls of the sexes as Huschke and Broca have noted as being 

 usual in civilised times. These latter differences we may be allowed 

 to ascribe to differences in education ; the former may, perhaps, be 

 explained by the relatively smaller-sized crania of female savages 

 having belonged to women who, during their early childhood, and 

 whilst their brains were being built up, had been subject to the 

 disadvantages of scanty diet. ' Savages/ Mr. Bagehot has told us, 

 ' are the poorest of the poor ; * and in a stone age, devoid of cerealia, 

 scarcity of game, or a murrain among domestic animals, would 

 bring famine alike upon the families of the chief, with whom, I take 

 it, we have here mainly to deal, and upon their serfs. The same 

 privations, the subjection to which at and after the time of puberty, 

 say fourteen years of age, we have suggested as the cause of the 

 disproportionately short stature of the women, would, if they came 

 into play upon the same subjects when at the age of fourteen 



