cxlii 



found in sepulchres of the Bronze Age, near Tifflis, in the Caucasus, by M. 

 de Smirnow, a Russian archjeologist. These Cymric Celts were the rear 

 guard of the older branch of the same Arjan migration, the Gaelic Celts, 

 who passed into Europe across the Caucasus and to the northward of the 

 Black Sea, having occupied the Crimea and Southern Russia from time 

 immemorial prior to the Iron Age, which was itself much older than the 

 Iliad of Homer. This practice of flattening and elongating the skull, by 

 means of bandages bound tight across the frontal regions, has been traced 

 along the line of march of this ancient people, from the Caucasus and the 

 Crimea to Denmark and to Toulouse in the south of France. Those of 

 Toulouse used but one bandage, while the more ancient custom was to 

 employ two. Comparing the researches of Amad^e Thierry with the 

 account of Herodotus, it was rendered highly probable that the Scythian 

 nomads, pressing upon them from the east, cut the nation in two, forcing 

 one portion of them into Asia Minor and the other ino Russia north of the 

 Black Sea. There was evidence also that, about seven centuries before 

 the Christian era, a wave of this people was turned back eastwards across 

 the Caucasus into Central Asia, whence they originally came. In these 

 sepulchres at Tifflis bronze implements were numerous, but there were none 

 of iron. Hippocrates mentions that in his time these people had abandoned 

 the practice of flattening the skull, and that then their heads were devel- 

 oped in the normal shape. 



M Faidherbe (ibid. pp. 605-12) states the results of his researches on 

 the populations of Northern Africa, as follows : 



Lybian Indigenes^ . J Berbers. . 75 percent. 



Whites from the North in very ancient times, ) ''' ^ 



Phenicians i 



Romans, auxiliaries, and Greeks i 



Vandals (in the East) ^ 



Arabs (nearly pure) 15 



Negroes (of all shades, pure and mixed) / • ■ • 5 



Israelites (analogous to the Arabs) 2 



Turks and renegade Europeans i 



100 



M.Topinard also read a paper showing extensive and minute researches 

 upon the origin of the different races in Northern Africa. 



Other members expressed the opinion that this Celtic migra- 

 tion into Europe extended much farther back in time, and was 

 more ancient than the observations of Dr. Broca would seem to 

 imply. 



Drs. T. L. Brunson and J. Payrer, on the Poisons of the Venomous 

 Snakes of Hindustan— the Colubrine {Cobra) and Viperine {Crotalus), 

 Naja^ Daboia, &c., in the Proc Royal Soc. of London (No. 149, p. 68) — 

 state, as the result of numerous and varied experiments, that the poison acts 

 directly upon the nervous system and great nervous centres, and has the 

 effect to stop respiration rather than the action of the heart. Death ensues 



