DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 431 



though fully alive to its importance. The second clause of the 

 critique, in speaking of the inadequacy of the number, of examples, 

 only paraphrases my own words, while at the same time it overlooks 

 general and cumulative evidence suggestive of a hypothesis to which 

 the special examples produced appeared to lend confirmation. "Well 

 aware that I was breaking new ground, I had myself, in sum- 

 ming up the deductions from examples produced, introduced certain 

 suggestive provisional inductions with these remarks : " Such are 

 the elements from which it has been attempted to deduce some 

 conclusions of general import in regard to the successive primi- 

 tive races that have occupied Scotland prior to the era of authentic 

 historic record. The data are much too few to justify the dog- 

 matic assertion of any general inferences, or to admit of posi- 

 tive answers to the questions naturally suggested. . , . They 

 include, however, all the examples that could be obtained, and are in 

 so far valuable as trustworthy examples of the cranial characteristics 

 of Scottish races, that they have been selected from various locali- 

 ties, by different individuals, with no single purpose in view.''* In 

 the brevity of his note Mr. Davis has probably compressed his 

 remarks into a form implying somewhat more than they were in- 

 tended to convey ; but from the remaining portion of the above com- 

 ment, no reader unfamiliar with the original text, could fail to under- 

 stand that I had produced certain spurious skulls as "Druids of lona." 

 A reference to the text will show that, in describing five crania pre- 

 sented to the Phrenological Society in 1833, by Mr. Donald Gregory, 

 I mentioned that they were each marked by him as the " Skull of a 

 Druid from the Hebrides." My own remarks are as follows : ** Mr. 

 Donald Grregory was secretary to the lona Club, and one of the 

 ablest Celtic scholars of his day. The designation which he affixed 

 to the crania brought from lona may be accepted as undoubted evi- 

 dence of their having been found under circumstances which afforded 

 proof of their high antiquity ; though it is not necessary to assume 

 from this that they had pertained to Druids. Most probably nothing 

 more was intended by the epithet, than to indicate in the briefest 

 manner, that he believed them to have belonged to the native popu- 

 lation prior to the introduction of Christianity in the sixth cen- 

 tury. "t The skulls were produced by me as examples of the Celtic 



» Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, p. 176. 

 t Ibid, p. 173. 



Vol. VII. X 



