Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 7 



ciation in distant parts of the globe is proof of the most 

 positive kind that the wanderings of peoples must have 

 brought this peculiar combination of freakish practices 

 from the centre where chance linked them together. 



Because it was the fashion among a particular group 

 of megalith-builders to tattoo the chins of their women- 

 kind, the wanderers who carried abroad the one custom 

 also took the other : but there is no genetic or inherent 

 connection between megalith-building and chin-tattooing. 



Such evidence is infinitely stronger and more con- 

 vincing than that afforded by one custom considered by 

 itself, because in the former case we are dealing with an 

 association which is definitely and obviously due to pure 

 chance, such as the so-called psychological method, how- 

 ever casuistical, is impotent to explain. 



But the study of such a custom as tattooing, even 

 when considered alone, affords evidence that ought to 

 convince most reasonable people of the impossibility of it 

 having independently arisen in different, widely scattered, 

 localities. The data have been carefully collected and 

 discussed with clear insight and common sense by Miss 

 Buckland (10) in an admirable memoir, which I should 

 like to commend to all who still hold to the meaningless 

 dogma "of the similarity of the working of the human 

 mind " as an explanation of the identity of customs. 

 Tattooing is practised throughout the great " heliolithic " 

 track. [Striking as Miss Buckland's map of distribution 

 is as a demonstration of this, if completed in the light of 

 our present information, it would be even more convincing, 

 for she has omitted Libya, which so far as we know at 

 present may possibly have been the centre of origin of 

 the curious practice.] 



Tattooing of the chin in women is practised in 

 localities as far apart as Egypt, India, Japan, New 



