HEAD-FORMS OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND. 349 



vations of Pruner-Bey, have certainly placed us in a far better 

 position for its consideration than the one we occupied when 

 Professor Nilsson vainly demanded of British anthropologists a 

 t}^ical Keltic skull. Still the differences of opinion founded on 

 these materials continue to be great, and are complicated hy 

 the doubt whether any or many pre- Keltic races have left their 

 traces not only in riverbeds, caves, and kjokkenmoddings, but 

 in the contents of our barrows and the blood of our people ; 

 and, moreover, by the obscurity of the relations inter se of the 

 Kymric, Gaelic, Belgic, and Grallo-Keltic stocks. 



The opinion formerly predominant "in this country, as in 

 France, that the Keltic skull was long, was somewhat rudely 

 shaken by the revelations of the Crania Britannica. Dr. 

 Barnard Davis, while claiming for the average Briton of the 

 barrows a moderate degree of brachykephalism, has never, so 

 far as I am aware, done the same for his supposed modern 

 representatives. His observations in Kerry {Or. Br., p. 200,) 

 equally with his extensive collection of modern and mediaeval 

 Irish skulls, indicate a tendency to length rather than to short- 

 ness. His colleague, however, in his recent valuable paper 

 in the Anthrop. Memoirs, vol. i, has gone further : — " In Eng- 

 land," he says (p. 127), " the prevailing form of skull is ovoid 

 or moderately dolichokephalic, combined with a more " than 

 medium stature, and generally with a fair skin, and light eyes 

 and hair. A much less common form of head is the brachy- 

 kephalic, usually found in connexion with a less stature, and 

 with a dark skin, eyes, and hair. The first of these two types 

 is Teutonic, and to be traced to an Anglo-Saxon and Scandi- 

 navian source, whilst it is almost equally certain that the second 

 is derived from our British or Keltic ancestors." 



All this seems to be assumed as a postulate by Dr. Thurnam. 

 I find, however, on analysing my observations, that they 

 distinctly negative the most important part of the statement. 

 On the one hand, eighty-one heads, which by my method of 

 measurement, in which the glabella is assumed to mean the 

 prominent spot between the superciliary ridges, yield a modulus 

 of more than eighty per cent. ; heads, therefore, which are 

 ordinai'ily called brachykephalic, belonged for the most part to 



