IS 



The Thirty- Fourth General Meeting, 



a tribe of ilic Durotrigcs partially mixed with the Bel gas, and also 

 perhaps with the Romans, of which race — in the opinion of Drs. 

 Beddoe and Garson, who have examined the skulls — some trace 

 may be seen in one or two of them. Unlike the skulls of the 

 earlier Britons their teeth showed traces of decay, and they were 

 afflicted to some extent with rheumatoid arthrites, or ' Poor Man's 

 Gout/ "Whether the exceptionally short stature of this Rushmore 

 tribe of Britons was accentuated by evils attendant upon slavery or 

 by the drafting of some of their largest men into the Roman legions 

 abroad is a point upon which we can only speculate. I shall not 

 attempt to dogmatise or to fix with precision the ethnical position 

 of this diminutive race, for it is evident that we are only on the 

 threshold of the inquiry. The tribe of Roman Britons at Frilford 

 examined by Professor Rolleston, if they really were Roman Britons,, 

 had an average stature of 5ft. Sin. for the males, so that a marked 

 difference may have existed between the different tribes, as might 

 reasonably be expected. I have another village close by to explore, 

 after which other villages on my property remain to be examined. 

 If it is thought that twenty-eight skeletons is a small number on 

 which to base a calculation of stature, it must be remembered that 

 the skeletons of Ancient Britons are scarce, but in the opinion of 

 good physical anthropologists the number is sufficient to form a 

 good approximate idea of the height. Dr. Thurnam based his 

 important conclusions upon no more than twenty-five long barrow 

 and twenty-seven round barrow people, so that my evidence is fully 

 equal to his in respect to the number of cases computed from. I 

 have now occupied so much time with the barrows that I must 

 defer what I had to say about the drift period. No one now requires 

 to be reminded of the great advance of knowledge that has been 

 brought about by the study of the drift gravels, which at the lowest 

 computation has quadrupled the time during which we are enabled 

 to investigate the works of man. No longer confined to the last 

 three thousand or four thousand years, the archaeologist has been 

 carried back far into geological time, and has been brought in view 

 of the earliest struggles of our ape-like ancestors to become men. 

 No individual amongst those who assembled here in 1849 had the 



