378 LECTURE XIII. 



Benatus. These graves belong, according to Amiet, from 

 their contents, undoubtedly to the end of the Eoman period, 

 that is to say, to the end of the fourth or beginning of the 

 fifth century, about which time Christianity was introduced in 

 Switzerland. 



A similar ring was found in the graves of Grenchen, which 

 thus belong to the same period. 



The skull of Schwab's collection came from a pile-work in 

 the vicinity of the effluence of the Scheuss, from the lake 

 of Bienne, which hitherto has only furnished Roman antiquities. 



All the narrow skulls of this kind known to me, where 

 the spots where they were found had been well examined, 

 thus belong to the same period, — the period of the decline of 

 the Roman empire and the introduction of Christianity in 

 Switzerland. They are in small proportions mixed with other 

 skulls which, as comparative examination teaches, have pre- 

 served their type from a comparatively recent period down to 

 the present day. We are thus permitted to suppose that these 

 narrow skulls which approach the simian type must have 

 belonged to immigrants, who arrived only in small numbers, 

 and whose type was not propagated but soon disappeared. 

 But we can trace no other immigration at that period than 

 that of Christian missionaries who, according to tradition, came 

 principally from Ireland. It is not so very improbable that 

 the new religion, before which the flourishing Roman civilisa- 

 tion relapsed into a state of barbarism, should have been intro- 

 duced by people in whose skulls the anatomist finds simious 

 characters so well developed, and in which the phrenologist 

 finds the organ of veneration so much enlarged. I shall, in 

 the meanwhile, call these simious narrow skulls of Switzerland 

 " Apostle skulls," as I imagine that in life they must have 

 resembled the type of Peter the Apostle, as represented in 

 Byzantine-Nazarene art. 



The jaw of Abbeville, the characters of which we have already 

 described, can in nowise serve for the determination of race 

 characters. The wide open angle formed by its rami, may 

 perhaps indicate prognathism, just as the Engis and Neander 

 skulls probably belonged to a prognathous race, but no certain 



