4^ ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIt'ICIAL 



benevolence, for the extension of intelligent happiness, by making 

 them the abode of men. Of the Imperial invaders of these primitive 

 people " — and so he passes on to the Romans. In this easy fashion 

 the author takes for granted that the people found by the Romans 

 in occupation of Britain were necessarily the descendants of those 

 who first entered there after it had become fitted for human habita- 

 tion. "When enthusiastic Celtic scholars advance another favoured 

 theory, that Welsh or Graelic was the language of Paradise, the 

 deduction is arrived at by very much the same process of reasoning, 

 which assumes that the oldest known race and language must neces^ 

 sarily be the first. Mr. Davis having thus committed himself to 

 opinions irreconciliable with any pre-Celtic hypothesis, its influence 

 is repeatedly apparent in his subsequent comments on British 

 crania. But on this very account the following description of those 

 of the Long Low barrow is the more valuable, unbiassed as it 

 is by any leanings to a theory in favour of the greater antiquity, 

 or special ethnical distinction of the long-headed builders of the 

 megalithie chambered mounds : " One of the skeletons derived 

 from the centre of this capacious cist owned the cranium we have 

 been permitted to delineate, now in the rich Celtic Museum of 

 Mr. Bateman. It is a remarkably regular, narrow, and long skull, of 

 good shape, medium thickness, and presenting few of the harsh pe- 

 culiarities of the ancient British race ; on the contrary, there is about 

 it an air of slenderness and refinement. In some features it assimi- 

 lates to the modern English cranium, although decidedly narrower ; 

 whilst its genuine and remote antiquity is determined by unques- 

 tionable evidence. It belongs in an eminent degree to the class of 

 dolichocephalic skulls ; and is the cranium of a man of about forty 

 years of age." After describing the bones of the face in minute 

 detail, he thus proceeds : " The side view shows a considerable eleva- 

 tion proceeding from the coronal region along the sagittal suture : a 

 large surface, from the flatness of the skull ; and a regular pleasing 

 outline. The bosses of the parietals are not prominent, yet the area 

 of these bones is extensive. The upper portion of the occipital 

 projects, and terminates below in a distinct ridge and protuberance. 

 The skull is unusually smooth and equable among the British series, 

 and exhibits a long narrow oval when viewed vertically, slightly de- 

 pressed in the left temporal region. Its widest part is just above the 

 mastoids, so that the occipital development is not deficient, and this 



