CEMETEEY AT FRILFOED. 629 



gested to us at once in the very probable hypothesis of intermarriages 

 taking place between foreigners and the, possibly aboriginal, in- 

 habitants of the country, who may have been actually slaves, but 

 must certainly have been in a lower state of civilisation. And in 

 this hypothesis the paucity of male River-bed skulls would also find 

 an explanation. 



The Roman immigrants had all but certainly a preponderating 

 proportion of males amongst them, and it would be natural to 

 suppose that the same disproportion prevailed similarly among the 

 swarms of the less settled, less civilised, Saxons. But I am bound 

 to say that the craniological evidence before me leads me to think 

 that the reverse of this very reasonable anticipation was what 

 actually took place, at all events here ; for the crania found buried 

 with the Anglo-Saxon insignia of the female sex are most distinctly 

 different, both as to signs of culture, and as to type and contour, 

 from the crania which belonged to the Romano-British women 

 exhumed here. I do not think these Rowenas with somewhat 

 prognathic jaws, and small unhandsomely contoured calvariae, could 

 have been ' exceedingly fair and goodly to look upon ; ' and I am 

 certain that Martial, though he may not have been a physiognomist, 

 would never have said of these Saxon females what he said of the 

 British lady, Claudia Rufina^ that she might have been taken 

 by a Roman matron for one of her own country-women. 



M. Serres, on the other hand, appears ^ to have convinced him- 

 self that in the Merovingian cemetery of Londinieres the males 

 belonged to the Scandinavian and the females to the Celtic race. 

 And, upon the general considerations which have been very clearly 

 and convincingly put forward by Professor Pearson ^ and by Mr. L, 

 O. Pike *, I should be inclined to think that wholesale massacres of 

 the conquered Romano-Britons were rare, and that wholesale im- 

 portations of Anglo-Saxon women were not much more frequent. 

 Still Anderida was levelled with the ground, and its women and 

 children, as well as its male inhabitants, were put to the sword. 



^ Claudia caeruleis quum sit Rufina Britannia 

 Edita, quam Latiae pectora plebis habet! 

 Quale decus formae ! Romanam credere matres 

 Italides possunt. — xi. 53. 

 2 Cochet, • Normandie Souterraine,' p. 188, ed. i ; ' Comptes Rendus,' xxxvii. p. 518 ; 

 ' L' Athenaeum rran9ais,' Oct. 22, 1853, p. 1013. 

 8 Op. cit. p. 100. 

 * ♦ The English and their Origin,' pp. 59. et seqq. 



