OOt) ox THE HEAD-FORMS 



In England we have to deal witli tlie duplicate theory of 

 Thurnam, and the triplicate theory of Daniel Wilson ; or, if 

 we adopt the single race theory of Barnard Davis, we have to 

 account for the disappearance of that tendency to brachyce- 

 phalism which he attributes to the majority of his Britons. I 

 find the pear- or coffin-shape which I have described, in a great 

 many of the skulls figured in the Crania Bniannlca, both long 

 and short, e. cj., those fi^om Parsley Hay, Ballidon Moor (bating 

 the prominence of the centre of the forehead,) Arras, End 

 Lowe, Codford, Juniper Green, Bincombe, and the long skull 

 from Uley, while the typical ovoid Saxon form is exhibited in 

 the example from Linton Heath, and less distinctly in others, 

 as those from "Wye Hill and Brighthampton. There are, how- 

 ever, cross exceptions. Thus the round skull from Tosson, 

 Northumberland, supposed to be late British, has a very German 

 look. The cofiBn-shaped " Saxon " from Harnham, if that 

 burying-ground belonged, as Thurnam thinks, to the churls 

 and thralls of the neighbourhood, may well have appertained to 

 a man of British lineage. If it be objected that the filling 

 out of the temporal region may arise in a race as a consequence 

 or concomitant of advancing civilisation, I can only reply that 

 the ancient Saxons and Merovingians certainly did not rank 

 very high in that respect, any more than some of our " bullet- 

 headed" boors of the present day ; and that the round-headed 

 barbarian of Tosson must in that case have been born long 

 before his time. 



As for the supposed brachykephalism, or inclination towards 

 brachykephalism, of the ancient British Celt, two or three con- 

 siderations suggest themselves. The change, if any change 

 there was, took place very long ago. Daniel Wilson has shown 

 evidence in favour of the mediseval Keltic skull having been 

 long ; and we can hardly suppose that under somewhat similar 

 influences the Keltic skull was growing narrower, and the 

 German one wider. If there really was a megalithic race, it 



Saxon one ; and moreover, that the form of M. Broca's Basque crania was 

 very ranch that of some modern Silurian heads. In the valley of the Meuse, 

 the long skull of Engis, and the shorter ones of M. Du2)ont's reindeer-men, 

 are certainly not adverse to my view in any way. 



