DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 405 



length and narrowness of head, a remarkable prolongation of the oc- 

 ciput, and poor frontal development. To this another appeared to 

 have succeeded with a short or brachycephalic head, prominent parietal 

 development, and truncated occiput. Accordingly when the questions 

 involved in such researches and speculations were brought under the 

 notice of ethnologists in a paper read by me before the British Asso- 

 ciation in lH.50, I there remarked : "Not the least interesting of the 

 indications which this course of investigation seems to establish in 

 relation to the primitive races of Scotland, are the evidences of the 

 existence of primitive British races prior to the Celtae ; and also the 

 probability of these races having succeeded each other in a different 

 order from the primitive colonists of the north of Europe. Meanwhile, 

 however, these data, and the conclusions derived from them, are pro- 

 duced chiefly with a view to induce more extended research. A 

 much greater accumulation of evidence is requisite to establish any 

 absolute or certain conclusions ; and this can only be obtained by 

 a general interest in the inquiry leading to the observation of such, 

 where the researches of the archaeologist, or the chance operations of 

 the agriculturist afford the desired means."* To suggest the possi- 

 bility of primitive races of men, not of Celtic origin, having been the 

 earlier occupants of Scotland appeared, in 1850, a sufficiently daring 

 extravagance. But the Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes of 

 M. Boucher de Perthes, had just issued from the Prench press ; and 

 already, after so brief an interval, we read in familiar phraseology 

 of the prehistoric man of the Pfahlbauten of Switzerland and Prance, 

 or of the Crannoges ©f Ireland and Scotland, and the Kjokken- 

 moddings of Denmark ; and are no longer startled even to hear 

 of the Flint-Folk of the preglacial period, the contemporaries of the 

 Elephas primiffenius and the Rhinoceros tichorinus. In 1851, before 

 this wonderful revolution in opinion had been brought about, my 

 ideas on the prehistoric races of Scotland, and inferentially of Britain, 

 were set forth in greater detail ;t but still necessarily accompanied 

 with expressions of regret at the inadequate data available for inves- 

 tigations on a subject then altogether novel. Scottish antiquaries — 

 sympathising in the views which guided Sir E. C. Hoare in returning 

 to the barrow the skull and bones of its occupant, while carefully 



* Inquiry into the Evidence of Primitive Races in Scotland prior to the Celta. Report 



fBrit. Assoc. 1850, p. 144. 



t Archceology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland- 



