430 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICIAL 



tte more striking departures from a symmetrical form of head are 

 to be observed." 



Such are the remarkable characteristics of crania recovered from 

 ancient megalithic tombs : as those of Uley, Gloucestershire ; Long 

 Lovf and Eingham Low, Staffordshire ; and Littleton Drew and 

 "West Kennet, "Wiltshire. The tendency of the evidence, derived 

 from independent observers, appears to confirm the idea of the 

 prevalence of a dolichocephalic form of head at the earliest as- 

 certained period of regular sepulture ; nor are there M^anting traces 

 of such specialities in this primitive British dolichocephalic skull as 

 induced me, when first observing it, to separate it into a kumbe- 

 cephalic class, distinct from the very difierent oval head of the medieval 

 and modern descendants of Britons and Anglo-Saxons. In an in- 

 troductory chapter of the Crania Britannica, Mr. Davis remarks on 

 my proposed classification of the succession of ethnical forms, as — 

 1st. Primitive Dolichocephalic, or Kumbecephalic ; 2nd. Brachy- 

 cephalic ; 3rd. Celtic : " The reader will perceive that only a slight 

 attempt appears to have been made to discriminate the sexes to 

 which the skulls might be referred ; and that the number of exam- 

 ples is obviously quite inadequate for any trustworthy conclusion ; 

 further inquiry has produced a serious question of the authenticity 

 of some of the series. The skulls of the supposed Druids of lona 

 and the Hebrides, Dr. Thurnam has ascertained are doubtless those 

 of Christian monks of the eighth or ninth century."* 



Of the more ancient crania referred to, including all that were then 

 accessible, the majority wanted the teeth and lower jaw, and in eight 

 of them the facial bones were defective or entirely absent. Under 

 similar circumstances some craniologists appear to have no hesitation 

 in determining the sex ; but I am at a loss to comprehend the data 

 on which their opinion is founded. The fine cranium of an ancient 

 German, found under a tumulus in Weimar, and presented by Goethe 

 to Blumenbach, is engraved in the sixty-first Table of his Decades 

 as that of a woman. But it wants the under jaw, which gives so 

 much of the character to the female skull ; and to Mr. J. B. Davis's 

 eye it " conveys the impression of its being rather the cranium of a 

 young man."t It was not therefore without reason that I hesitated 

 to speak with confidence, where the point was so open to dispute, 



* Crania Britannica, Decade I. p. 2. 

 t Crania Britannica, Dec. I., p. 25. 



