DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 43^ 



pertaining to what he designates "the long-headed aborigines of 

 Ireland."* 



During the fourteen years that have intervened since the first 

 publication of my ideas on some of the questions now referred to, 

 in the course of much familiar correspoudence with the authors of 

 the Crania Britannica, and others engaged in similar researches, I 

 have endeavoured to help forward the discovery of scientific truth, 

 wholly irrespective of any theories or systems of my own ; not un- 

 mindful of the Laureate's rebuke : — 



Our little systems have their day ; 

 They have their day and cease to be. 



Interrupted, as I was, in favourite studies, by transfer to other 

 and widely contrasting scenes, I have looked on from a distance, 

 while many zealous and enthusiastic labourers have been devoting 

 themselves to different departments of prehistoric research, which 

 only a few years since were unheeded or discountenanced. In 

 1850, the question was started in the Ethnological sub-section of the 

 British Association, whether " crauiological " papers should be per- 

 mitted a hearing. But now, after an interval of twelve years charac- 

 terized by extensive research in the special department of scientific 

 inquiry under review, which, in Britain at least, had previously 

 met with little encouragement ; I may be permitted to feel some 

 gratification in finding one of my " guesses at truth," in which I ran 

 counter to the deductions of continental as well as British scientific 

 observers, finding, thus far, so much confirmation from independent 

 sources. I await with interest the completion of the labours of 

 Dr. Thurnam and Mr. Davis, on their admirable national work ; 

 and especially the summing up of their deductions from the data 

 there accumulated ; prepared to accept the truth, whether it con- 

 form to preconceived theories or not. But meanwhile the evidence 

 produced on various hands appears so far to coincide in revealing 

 a dolichocephalic, if not the kumbeeephalic form of cranium, as the 

 predominant one in the chambered barrows : characterised by Mr. 

 Davis as " unquestionably of vast antiquity ;"t and without doubt 

 the most ancient examples of regular British sepulture hitherto 

 explored. 



It has been shown by repeated references in the previous pages, 



* Ethnology of the Ancient Irish; by W. R. Wilde, M.E.I.A. 



t Proceedings of tfte Acad. Nat. Sciences, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 43. 



