A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE SCOTTISH SKULL. 373 



(22), a similar change has been taking place in the development of Egyptian skulls. 

 Turner in his memoir says that in Scotland there is exhibited at the present time 

 " a distinct brachycephalic tendency " ; while Pearson (8) states, with regard to the 

 cephalic index, that " it appears to be a quantity closely associated with degrees of 

 civilisation and capacity for racial survival in the struggle for existence. It is a 

 measure of round-headedness, and, in a certain rough sort of way, round-headedness 

 gives the maximum of skull capacity for the same amount of material." He is of 

 the opinion that the extra group struggle for existence has gone in favour of the 

 brachycephalic races, and that in most continents we find the mainland occupied 

 by the latter races, while the promontories, outlying borders, and islands are 

 occupied by dolichocephalic races apparently driven out before victorious brachy- 

 cephaly. His final conclusion, from a table comprising a long list of cephalic indices, 

 is that " the dominating and most highly civilised peoples of the world, together 

 with the races from which they have sprung, fall into the brachycephalic portion of 

 the table." He admits there are exceptions to this general statement, including the 

 Anglo-Saxon and the Whitechapel English. The position of the Anglo-Saxon type 

 he ascribes to the group being mixed with long-barrow British ; but " the White- 

 chapel English will still, however, remain a striking anomaly." 



It is interesting to be able to range alongside the Whitechapel English another 

 series of skulls, more extensive and derived from an entirely different source, but 

 almost identical in their mean characters with the above series in support of the 

 position of dolichocephaly. 



It is Pearson's contention that the Whitechapel skulls were those of the poorer 

 classes, and that this accounts for the long-headedness, as he suggests that there is a 

 class distinction to be noted in European countries — the higher classes having a dis- 

 tinctly greater tendency to brachycephaly than the lower classes. Such an explana- 

 tion would not hold in the case of the present series, as there is no evidence that the 

 skulls are derived from people in the lower walks of life. It has been asserted that 

 town populations are more brachycephalic than country populations, but the evidence 

 adduced by the present series does not support such a view, as the series — manifestly 

 a town series — is, if anything, less brachycephalic as regards its skull form than the 

 country around. 



Parsons (7) writes of his Hythe crania that " they entirely fail to substantiate 

 the theory which Dr Macdonnell advances, that during the last two or three 

 centuries a marked change has been going on in the shape of English skulls ; that 

 their length has been decreasing while their breadth has increased." He reminds 

 Dr Macdonnell that the latter's Whitechapel series cannot be regarded as repre- 

 sentative of the English skull as a whole, but only of the type of the seventeenth- 

 century Londoner and nothing more, and says that " we must realise the fact that 

 we are still in complete ignorance of the skull shapes in other parts of England 

 in the past." 



