78 CELTIC REMAINS IN ALGERIA. 



handling. The longest tibiae were shorter than those of a man 

 of average height. The skulls appeared to Dr. Boujot and myself 

 to be dolicho-cephalic ; one of them was very thick in the occip- 

 ital region. A small lower jaw was toothless and thin, from 

 absorption by age. One imperfect calvarinm reminded us of the 

 Engis skull, which, my friend Dr. Tuke informs me, resembles one 

 of which he has a plaster cast, supposed to be that of the Vener- 

 able Bede. There were no signs of cremation, and no flint 

 implements ; a fragment of coarse pottery and a wire-like piece of 

 bronze, about 2| inches in length, having an obscure pattern 

 worked on it, were found with the bones. On the opposite side 

 of the ravine, there are many artificial caverns ; some have fallen 

 in, others have theii' entrances obstructed by rubbish ; they prob- 

 ably were tenanted by the race that erected the dolmens for the 

 reception of their dead. I could distinguish, far to the west, 

 near the sea, the tomb of Juba II, 150 feet in height, which, like 

 that of Syphax, seems to jDreserve (as M. Detourneux remarks) 

 the traditional and national character of the sepulchres largely 

 distributed throughout Algeria. M. Berbrugger shewed me a 

 bronze fibula, in good preservation, found in one of the Guyot- 

 ville dolmens. Mr. Ferrand, of Constantina, confirmed what 

 H. Christy had told me, thai? the coin of the EmjDress Faustina,* 

 which they found in one of the eighteen cromJechs (or dolmens) 

 near that city, which were examined by them, lay with human 

 bones in the black earth, and that in all probabilitj'- the grave 

 had never been disturbed. Was it the obolus for Charon, de- 

 posited between the teeth of the deceased? Colonel Feyb^, of 

 Bona, sent to the Scientific Institution at Algiers, twenty crania, 

 which he had obtained from dolmens and similar tombs in that 

 neighbourhood. On the eve of my departure from Algiers I had 

 not time for more than a very cursory inspection of them, or of 

 some of the proof sheets of Colonel Feybe's Memoir on these 

 skulls, which he was about to publish. There are varieties in 

 their characters, although mostly dolicho-cephalic : some have 

 rather angular bosses on the parietal bones. Facts seem to lead 

 to the conclusion, that through successive ages, cliff'erent races 



* In the time of Avitus, Emperor of the West, the tax gatherer woiUd 

 receive no coins hut those of Faustina or the Antonines. 



