THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 215 



widened and flattened, and an external infra-trochanteric ridge gave a defined outer 

 border to the femoral shaft distinct from and in front of the gluteal ridge. I had 

 also described a similar conformation in the femora of Maoris, Sandwich Islanders, 

 Lapps and Esquimaux. Attention has since been called by Manouvrier to this 

 character, which he has named platymery, in femora from neolithic burials in France 

 and from the Guanche cave-burials in the Canary Islands. In the Mackay tibiae the 

 index of platyknemy was in one 63'6, in the other 65"6 ; that of platymery 56"4 and 

 58 "8 respectively. In the MacArthur cave these characters in the shafts of the tibiae 

 and femora were not so accentuated. 



It should be pointed out that in each cave^ considerable quantities of soil and 

 rock debris were present. In those in which skulls were found the entrances had 

 been obstructed ; in the Mackay cave by an embankment of earth 8 to 9 feet 

 thick, in which beech trees were growing, and in the MacArthur cave by a talus 

 of earth and stones from the fall of superincumbent rock, which blocked and 

 concealed the entrance. Evidently, therefore, the human remains found in these 

 caves were not from recent occupancy. The presence of bones of at least fifteen 

 individuals of different ages and sex, with the remains of food and cooking, points 

 to the caves having been at some former period places of residence and ultimately 

 of interment. 



It is to be noted that no mention is made of either bronze or iron implements ; 

 stone, flint, horn and bone, were the material provided by nature and rudely 

 fashioned by the people for their purposes. In one instance only, the Gasworks cave, 

 were some fragments of coarse pottery found. The implements were therefore those 

 employed by neolithic man, and it was to this period that the caves were ascribed 

 by Dr Anderson and myself in our respective memoirs. 



As regards the skulls in the MacArthur cave, it has been argued that they were 

 not cotemporaneous with the makers of the implements owing to their superficial 

 position on the floor of the cave, one being on the surface of the black earth, another 

 embedded in it and almost on the top of the subjacent shell-bed. It should ? however, 

 be stated that of the boxes containing human bones which reached me for examina- 

 tion, No. 2 was labelled "obtained in the shell-bed below the layer of black earth," 

 and No. 3 " bones from the shell-beds and pockets in and under a layer of gravel, 

 situated below No. 2." There are grounds for thinking that the human bones which 

 were mingled with the food refuse and implements were those of the original 

 occupants. The skulls, again, found more superficially were presumably those of the 

 last occupants, which remained where they died. It does not, however, follow that 

 they were not the descendants of the older dwellers in the cave. The skulls differed 

 so greatly in form and proportion from the rounded brachycephalic heads which 

 are associated with the characteristic tombs and implements of bronze burials, that 

 we cannot associate them with that period. They must therefore belong either to 

 an antecedent or a subsequent period. There is nothing in the great length of the 



