NOTES AND QUERIES. 
425 
on tlie dist'orerj. It is, however, possible that it may be at least as ancient 
as some of the other crania, e.g. the one from Mewslade, to which I have 
already referred. 
I have Professor Busk's permission to subjoin the following extract of 
his notes on the Kellet skull : — 
<6th August. — " If the fissure in question were open from the top, it may 
be asked, why did not the body fall, or be introduced into it that way ? 
Except from concomitant circumstances, and, in some cases, perhaps their 
chemical condition, I do not think much can be predicated of a single skull, 
at any rate with respect to its age, from its form alone. The ]\Iewslade 
skull, also found in a limestone fissure, but with many very ancient animal 
remains, undoubtedly its contemporaries, is not, as you are aware, of the 
rounded type, like the Scandinavian and Scottish stone-age crania, but 
moderately dolichocephalic, and flat, or rather straight, along the summit. 
I have not seen the Etruscan skull you mention, but presume it to be, as 
you hint, brachycephahc. If so, the Kellet skull will not resemble the 
Mewslade and several of the river-bed skulls, which, there is reason to 
believe, are properly of a later population than the brachycephahc. " 
V2th August. — " It is rather a curious form, beings as you say, strongly 
brachycephalic (about 850), and so far it corresponds with the Scandinavian 
stone men ; but in other respects it difiers very widely from them, being in 
the first place far more capacious, and very wide, especially in the frontal re- 
gion, remarkably even in contour, and with a look altogether of higher breed- 
ing. The superciliary arches are thin and fine, totally unlike the beetle 
brows of the old Danes ; and the remains of the ossa nasi show that he 
had a prominent, thin, and, may be, aquiline nose. The lower jaw is 
light in comparison, and the angle prominent, as is common, I believe, in 
what are termed the Eoman crania by Davis and Thurnam. On the 
whole, I am inclined to refer it to a much later period than the stone, 
notwithstanding the fossilized condition of the bones ; but it would be 
very interesting to find some articles with it. . . . The shape at vertex is 
flattened, and not so pyramidal as the true stone skulls. 
"I am yours truly, 
"Geo. BrsK." 
It is, of course, hardly necessary to say that I coincide entirely in these 
observations ; and do not doubt that my readers wiU be pleased to hear 
that a decade of " Priscan crania " is now completed, and \^ iU shortly be 
published by Professor Busk, in addition to his magnificent ' Crania 
Typica.' 
I am also indebted to Professor Busk, E.E.S., for the beautiful and ac- 
curate outhne of the Kellet skull, taken in four different aspects ; and to 
Mr. S. J. Mackie, F.G.S., for the drawings of the frontal bone (B) from 
Heathery Burn, and the Leicester skull, referred to by me in the ' Geolo- 
gist,' vol. V. p. 313. The Kellet skull will be ultimately deposited in the 
Ethnological Society's collection. — Charles Caetee Blake. 
Human Eemains tx Eivee Beds. — Sir, — No better proof can be given 
of the accuracy of the observations in your comments on the Geologist's 
Association (' Geologist,' vol. v. p. 320) that the geology of the neigh- 
bourhood of London aflbrds many yet unexplored topics of interest, than 
the following scattered facts : — 
John Hunter, writing about the year 1793, quotes a letter which he had 
received from Sir James HaU, of Scotland, dated Eome, February 24th, 
1785. 
In this letter a hill is described that lies about three miles from Eome, 
in the road to Loretto. " It is about 3(XJ or 400 yards beyond an old 
TOL. V. 3 I 
