Notes and Comments. 11g 
traverse. It was so with the valleys of Britain at the beginning 
of human occupancy, and this explains why the oldest roads 
of our country so often take an ill-graded way instead of the 
apparently simpler and more direct course along a valley.’ 
IN INHABITED COUNTRIES. 
‘But as soon as a country acquires a settled population, 
this unstable habit of running water is corrected. For many 
-reasons, human interests demand that a stream shall have a 
fixed course. When tribal or individual ownership of land was 
established, the rivers and streams often afforded the best 
natural boundaries. The convenience of sites chosen for 
dwellings depended upon the constancy of the waters; and 
every cattle-enclosure required a permanent drinking place. 
Even the smallest brooks thus came under the influence of 
proprietary rights that were exerted to restrain the stream .to 
the convenient channel and to curb its natural waywardness.’ 
BRONZE-AGE INVADERS OF BRITAIN. 
Nature, No. 2363, contains the presidential address delivered 
to the Royal Anthropological Institute by Professor Arthur 
Keith, F.R.S., on “ The Bronze-Age Invaders of Britain.’ He 
informs us “ that somewhere about the year 2000 B.c., when the 
peoples of western Europe were beginning to learn the uses of 
bronze and to alter the style of their pottery, a race of invaders - 
began to reach our shores, who were totally different from 
any race which had lived in Britain before that time. The 
ancient British, although of various strains, were all of them 
of the long-headed type ; they had projecting occiputs ; their 
heads appeared as if compressed from side to side. But those 
Bronze-Age Invaders had rounded heads, with flat occiputs ; 
their heads had the appearance of having been compressed 
from back to front. European anthropologists name this 
round-head type of man “ Celtic”’ ; they regard him as an 
offshoot from the racial type which now attains its greatest 
purity in the mountainous countries of Central Europe—the 
“ Alpine ’’ type of race.’ 
DIFFERENT LANDING PLACES. 
_‘ The Hon. John Abercromby, who is our leading authority 
on British pottery, weapons, and ornaments of the Bronze 
age, is of opinion that the round-headed invaders were few in 
number, and that, after gaining a foothold in Kent, they gradu- 
ally spread northwards and westwards throughout our coun- 
try. With that conception I cannot agree. The south- 
eastern part of England was apparently only one of the landing 
places; the reseaches which were carried out by Canon 
Canon Greenwell and Mr. Mortimer leave us in no doubt as to 
their arrival in eastern Yorkshire; the round-heads became 
masters of it. The counties which bound the Firth of Forth 
19): April 1, 
