®n an ancient S{?nll from tbe Cave of Xombrive 
in tbe Pyrenees, anO a comparatively? flbobern 
one from Miltsbire. 
By John Beddoe, M.D., LL.B., F.R.S., &c. 
HIS skull was discovered between forty and fifty years ago, in the 
1 celebrated cave of Lombrive in the Pyrenees. It came into the 
hands of Mr. Philip John Worsley, who brought it to England and 
presented it to me ; and he and I have now the pleasure of handing it 
over, as our joint gift, to the Bristol Museum, whose collection of 
crania has now attained considerable proportions and value. 
The skull in question was embedded in stalagmite, and though it 
is not possible to give it anything at all approaching to a date, we 
cannot, I believe, be wrong in putting it at least far back in the 
neolithic period, if not even earlier. Like Mr. Burnard’s Cattedown 
fragments, for which he plausibly enough claims palaeolithic antiquity, 
and on which I have myself reported in that belief, it is an instance of 
a very early human relic displaying rather high characteristics. 
It is true that for a male, as I take it to be, it is small in capacity 
and in most of its measurements ; but it is not coarse in lineaments or 
over thick or heavy : the bounding curves are soft, and the skull, 
though rather narrow, is “ well filled,” It is not prognathous nor 
platyrrhine. The vertical aspect is elliptic rather than anything else : 
the lower occipital, from the inion to the opisthion, is shorter than 
usual. The sutures generally are open, and the teeth are sound, and 
though somewhat worn, do not indicate advanced age. The orbital 
index is somewhat low, about 77. The well-balanced form of the skull 
seems to lead to a degree of agreement in the various estimates of 
capacity which is unfortunately not very common. The average 
resultant of ten methods is 1320 cubic centimetres, of six diametral 
ones 1324, of four peripheral ones 1316 (which is also exactly my own 
estimate). The extremes are Welcker’s C (Diametral), which is 1294, 
and Pearson’s basio-bregmatic (also Diametral) which rises to 1360. 
The peripheral and diametral methods here agree wonderfully well 
when averaged ; but the former agree better among themselves and are 
most satisfactory. In the British skull which I am presently to 
describe, you will find a different state of matters. 
Broadly speaking, I should ascribe this skull to the Mediterranean 
race, that is, to one of its remote ancestors ; but I do not recognise 
any special likeness to the old Cromagnon men, nor yet to the modern 
Basques. 
As to the provenance of the second cranium, there is little to 
be said. It came from a long-disused Quakers’ burying-ground in 
Bradford-on-Avon, and may with great probability be described as 
having belonged to a Wiltshire Quaker of the eighteenth century or 
