HEJPORT OX BONES FROM HARLYN SAY. 167 



We are now prepared to form an estimate, at least for the 

 males, with some approach to confidence. I should fix the 

 average stature at about 1640 mm. = 64-55 inches, that for 

 females being probably about that given by Pearson's formula, 

 viz. : 1556 mm. or 61-2 inches. My own figure is too high for 

 the women, on the assumption that we have a fair sample of the 

 community. But I am inclined to think the figure for the males 

 an imder-estimate, for the following reason : — Some of what 

 would seem to be the largest and thickest femora, and those with 

 the largest heads, are in fragments incapable of redintegration, 

 and therefore of measurement. As a rule, large bones have a 

 better chance of survivance than small ones, and therefore 

 apparently male than female bones ; but whether this superiority 

 may be so distinct in very dry soil like the Harlyn Bay sand, I 

 cannot say. 



Anyhow, our observations go to swell the mass of evidence 

 that the general population of Britain, before and after the 

 Christian era, was not, in spite of Strabo, of tall stature. It 

 would appear that the stalwart bronze race had not been 

 sufficiently numerous to elevate much, if at all, the stature of 

 the neolithic population. Thus, 23retermitting the "older and better 

 known lists of Davis and Thurnam, we have from Pitt-Eivers 

 and Garson notes of 6 male femora from Worb arrow in Wiltshire 

 belonging to an extremely dolichokephalous strain (cranial index 

 69-3), which, according to Pearson, yield a stature of 1625 

 (exactly 64 inches), Manouvrier's estimate being scarcely lower 

 (1622), and mine very little higher (1632). The subsequent 

 intrusion of the bronze race, whose stature nobody puts much 

 lower than 1700 mm. (67 inches), and most of us a good deal 

 higher (my own figure being 1762), this intrusion, I say, though 

 it may have had something to do with the enlargement of the 



