290 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
of the middle and western parts of Scotland, where they fell to 
76.” 
Notwithstanding this uniformity of craniological types now 
prevalent among our populations, it is not a remarkably rare 
occurrence to meet with a specimen of the dolichocephalic skull 
which has survived to historical times, with apparently little 
deviation from its primitive normal characters, such as that from 
a modern graveyard in Aberdeenshire, referred to by Professor 
Cunningham (p. 294 et seg.). On this point the following remarks 
by M. de Quatrefages are worth quoting : — 
‘ ‘ In passing through the Copenhagen Museum, I was struck by the 
Neanderthal characters presented by one of the crania in the collection ; it 
proved to be that of Kay Lykke, a Danish gentleman, who played some part 
in the political affairs of the seventeenth century. M. Godron has published 
the drawing of the skull of Saint Mansuy, Bishop of Toul, in the fourth 
century, and this head even exaggerates some of the most striking features of 
the Neanderthal cranium. The forehead is still more receding, the vault 
more depressed, and the head so long that the cephalic index is 69 *41. 
Lastly, the skull of Bruce, the Scottish hero, is also a reproduction of the 
Canstadt type ” ( Human Species , p. 309). 
But all this merely proves the strong tendency to survivalism 
which seems to be peculiar to dolichocephalism. On the other 
hand, we seem to possess fewer traces of the brachy cephalic 
skulls among our populations of the present day, a fact which is 
more remarkable inasmuch as the descendants of the “Alpine” 
broadheads are still the predominating race among the modern 
populations of France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. It would 
seem that brachycephalism was a mere mushroom growth of the 
Neolithic period, for evidence of it is not, as far as I know, to 
be found in Palaeolithic times. If so, it may be a comparatively 
unstable factor in the organic evolution of man, and may be 
paralleled with the fact that a domestic animal when allowed to 
run wild quickly reverts to the general wild stock and assumes 
its primitive characteristics. What, then, becomes of the general 
opinion held by so many of our foremost ethnologists, that these 
tall, round-headed invaders of our country in the Early Bronze 
Age were the true Celts of history % If we accept the affirmative 
of this problem, it would appear as if the brachycephalic skull 
has become so modified, in the course of some two thousand 
years, by cross-breeding, etc., as to come within the category of a 
