386 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OP THE 



ground. M. Paul Broca, the learned Secretary of the Societe d'An- 

 thropologie de Paris, in an ethnological resume addressed to the 

 society in 1863, when contrasting two distinct types of skull — the one 

 brachy cephalic and the other dolichocephalic, — recovered from sepul- 

 chres of the Burgundian period, affirms of the successive occupants of 

 French soil : "The Celts, the Cymri, and the Germans, were dolicho- 

 cephali ; and so were the Romans in a less degree. There is there- 

 fore," he adds, "no question that the brachycephalic type still so 

 prevalent among us, is derived from populations prior to the arrival 

 of the Celts." Again, M. Pruner-Bey, in discussing before the same 

 body the ethnical affiaities of the Neanderthal man, characterised by 

 a skull little less remarkable for its great length and narrowness, than 

 for the extreme development of the superciliary ridges, says : "let us 

 try if it is possible to classify the Neanderthal skull. la it the repre- 

 sentative of a lost race, or can it be identified with any of the stocks 

 which are known to us ? In my opinion it is undoubtedly the skull 

 of a Celt ; it belongs to a large individual ; it is capacious and doli- 

 chocephalic ; it presents the depression on the posterior third of the 

 sagittal suture common to the Celts and Scandinavians ; and finally 

 its occipital projection is equally characteristic of these two races." 

 M. Pruner-Bey then produces one Helvetian and two Irish skulls as 

 illustrations of the true Celtic type, and thus proceeds : " Whilst they 

 all present the same general type, these three skulls exhibit slight 

 differences. There evea exists a fourth variety, represented in the 

 collection of Retzius by an ancient Belgian, whose skull is more 

 compressed laterally than that of the first Irishman, which is almost 

 cylindrical. In the gallery of the museum there is a sufficiently numer- 

 ous series of ancient French skulls of the same type in every respect 

 as those before us. . . . Without entering into descriptive details 

 respecting the ancient Celtic skull, you will recognise that all the 

 ancient skulls before us present a very depressed forehead, compared 

 with the enormous facial development ; but that which the forehead 

 loses in height it gains in length." He then, in considering the 

 evidence that the skulls produ'^ed are really Celtic, refers, among 

 other proofs, to "comparison by the retrogressive or progressive 

 method with skulls of Bretons, French, and modern Irishmen, in 

 which the mass are undoubtedly Celtic ;" and adds : " Although the 

 Celtic skull has undergone some secondary modifications, its type is 

 at the present day the same as in the most remote ages. I refer to 



