SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 83 
»p. (4); Description of the Caedegai Skull, pl. 23, p. (3); Description of Green 
Lowe Skull, pl. 41, p. (2), &. 
2. I find the readers of Dr. Wilson’s memoir regard it as a laudation of my 
coadjutor, Dr. Thurnam, no doubt for very just and valid reasons, whilst it is, 
at the same time, a condemnation of myself. I conclude such was not the 
object of the writer, but it has insensibiy resulted from his different treatment 
of two persons. In some cases, he appears even to have complimented the one 
-at the expense of the other. There is, however, one passage at page 430, in 
which, by some singular confusion or misleading feeling, he has attributed to 
that other a sentence in the “ Crania Britannica” with which Dr. Wilson is 
deeply offended, and yet the sentence itself is quite clear in referring its author- 
ship to Dr. Thurnam. Whilst I am disposed to bear my own heavy sins, for 
which I am happy to say the just and natural apology I have made has pro- 
duced me full forgiveness, it seems hard to make me the scape goat for the 
offences of my neighbours, even although they are much purer and better than 
myself. The sentence is this, referring to the skulls described in Dr. D. Wilson’s 
learned and pleasing volume, ‘“‘ The Archeology and Prehistoric Annals of 
Scotland,” I said: ‘Further inquiry has produced a serious question of the 
authenticity of some of the series. The skulls of the supposed Druids of Iona 
and the Hebrides, Dr. Thurnam has ascertained are doubtless those of Christian 
‘monks of the eighth or ninth century.”’—Cran. Brit., p. 21, note. I know not 
that I ever saw the skulls in question, and I am utterly incapable of giving 
any opinion upon them. Therefore, however apologetic towards my reputed 
offence the succeeding comment of Dr. Wilson may be, I must deserve to be 
wholly exonerated from the supposed delinquency in this case. Dr. Wilson 
writes: ‘In the brevity of his note Dr. Davis has probably compressed his 
remarks into a form implying somewhat more than they were intended to con- 
vey ; but from the remaining portion of the above comment, no reader unfami- 
liar with the original text could fail to understand that I had produced certain 
spurious skulls as Druids of Iona.”—(Hthnical Forms, p. 431). Of whatever else 
I may have been guilty, 7 must assuredly be acquitted of making such an unjust 
insinuation. It was not mine, that is plain to any reader, and I firmly believe 
its real author had not the most remote idea that any one could deduce from it 
an insinuation so unfounded. The heat of argument has sadly misled Dr. Wil- 
son in this portion of his memoir. 
3. At page 433, Dr. Wilson quotes from the ‘‘ Crania Britannica,”—Descrip- 
tion of Green Gate Hill Skull, pl. 3 and 4, p. (3): “These differences will go 
far to render questionable the opinion which has been assumed, that by ascend- 
ing to the earliest pre-historic times we shall find the crania endowed with 
uniformity, or, as it were, stereotyped.” To which he adds: “ An idea not to 
‘be met with, so far as I am aware, elsewhere.” I can assure Dr. Wilson that 
the idea is not mine, but that of an able advocate of pre-historic races. In Dr. 
W. R. Wilde’s “Ethnology of the Ancient Irish,” he says: ‘‘ Although we find 
every variety of head among the modern mixed races of civilized countries, 
when we come to examine primitive or savage tribes we find the character of 
their crania and general physical condition more and more stereotyped as we 
recede from civilization.”—P. 11. 
