378 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 



the diverse ancient British forms : another opinion specially maintained 

 by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, is, that the brachycephalic head of the 

 barrows is the true Celtic skull-form, and that all others, not Anglo- 

 Saxon, — including even the Kumbecephalic crania of the megalithic 

 tombs, — are mere exceptional deviations, or what he styles " aberrant 

 forms." A third hypothesis may be started, which would receive 

 confirmation from the opinions advocated by one class of ethnologists 

 on philological grounds, that the Cymri and the Gaels are two essen- 

 tially distinct races ;* in which case the two very diverse forms of 

 head may be physical tests of the two races. A fourth idea cannot 

 be overlooked, in reference to some points discussed in subsequent 

 pages, that the head of the Gaul and the British Celt may have under- 

 gone modifications in the course of time, wholly apart from any 

 admixture with other races. One other opinion, in special favour 

 among certain purely philological ethnologists, need not be discussed 

 here, viz. : that craniology is valueless for ethnical classification. 



Looking meanwhile to the osteological evidence derived from the 

 British Islands, this much appears to be established, that at some re- 

 mote period, lying beyond the earliest glimpses of any definite 

 British History, the Kumbecephalic, or long headed race, occupied 

 Britain in such numbers as to be capable of the combined labour re- 

 quired in the construction of vast chambered cairns and barrows. 

 These sepulchres I cannot doubt are the mausolea of a royal or privi- 

 ledged class, and not common receptacles of the dead. They ex- 

 hibit the laborious but unskilled architecture of a megalithic era, 

 lavished ungrudgingly on the sepulchres of the honoured dead. The 

 only works of art found in them, or at least appearing strictly to 

 belong to their original contents, are bone and flint implements, and 

 rude pottery. This race, as appears from some of the crania re- 

 covered from the megalithic chambers, was not altogether ignorant, 

 at some period of its presence in Britain, of another, characterised by 

 an essentially different form of head. The circumstances under which 

 the latter have been met with seem to justify the opinion that this 

 Brachycephalic race occupied a servile relation to the other. When, 

 however, we pass into a later, but still prehistoric era, the long-headed 

 race disappears ; and the simple earth-barrow and small cist charac- 

 teristic of the latter race, reveal almost exclusively the brachycephalic 



'Celtic Language in reference to Race; by John Crawford, Esq., P.R.S. On 

 the Gaels and Celts; hj M. Lagneau, &c. 



