1905-6.] Human Skeleton, with Prehistoric Objects. 289 
the successive Teutonic invasions from Germany, Denmark, and 
Scandinavia, all belonging to a tall, blond, dolichocephalic people 
who existed in Central Europe from time immemorial — possibly the 
descendants of the Neanderthaloid races of Palaeolithic times. 
We have made no reference to the Roman occupation as a 
factor in British ethnology, because the Romans were a mere ruling 
caste, who, although they introduced new arts, industries, and 
customs into the country, kept themselves aloof from the natives, 
and did not, as a rule, intermarry with them. So that when they 
finally abandoned Britain they left its inhabitants racially un- 
affected, much as would be the case if the British were now to 
retire from India. To-day we hunt for remains of military roads, 
camps, accoutrements of war, and other relics of their civilisation, 
but of their skeletons we know very little, and of their British 
offspring nothing at all. 
But there is another standpoint from which these skulls have a 
special interest to the British people of to-day, viz. — What has 
been the subsequent fate of the primitive races they represent? 
Can these highly differentiated skull-forms, so strikingly illustrated 
by the specimens now before us, be still traced among our modern 
populations? If not, has the assimilation of the two races with 
one another, and with subsequent immigrants, so equalised their 
early cranial peculiarities as to be no longer recognisable ? From 
the researches of modern writers on physical anthropology, as 
stored up in various anthropometric documents, it appears that 
there is great uniformity in the cephalic index among the present 
inhabitants of the British Isles. Thus, Dr Beddoe gives, as the 
result of the measurement of seven groups of Scotchmen in various 
stations of life, 7 5 ‘5 as the highest average cephalic index, and 
74*2 as the lowest ( Anthropological History of Europe , p. 104). 
Mr Ripley, in his Races of Europe (p. 304), thus writes : — 
“Wherever heads have been measured, whether in the Aran 
Islands off the west coast of Ireland, the Hebrides and Scottish 
Highlands, Wales and Cornwall, or the counties about London, 
the results all agree within a few units. These figures, noted 
upon the localities where they were taken, are shown upon our 
little sketch map on page 304. It will be observed at once that 
the indexes all lie between 77 and 79, with the possible exception 
PRO(J. ROY. SOC. EDIN. — YOL. XXVI. 19 
