26 
JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
variation being due, in Mr. Green well's opinion, " to local circum- 
stances or conditions;" 1 and while in the south-west of England 
inhumation was the rule, in Yorkshire cremation predominated. 2 
There are indications which led Dr. Thurnam to conclude that 
the long -barrow people were cannibals; they were no doubt 
altogether pre-historic ; and their skeletons show that they were a 
feebler race than the round-barrow builders by whom they were 
supplanted. 
Not a single long barrow has been found in Devon or in Cornwall. 
Either their builders did not dwell further west than Dorset ; or — 
an utterly unreasonable supposition — all traces of them beyond the 
Dorset border have disappeared. Eound barrows we have by hun- 
dreds and by thousands ; long barrows not one. Are we to assume 
therefore that in the Long-Barrow Period the Western Peninsula was 
without inhabitants? The beautifully fabricated Neolithic im- 
plements scattered throughout Devon and Cornwall prove the 
contrary. The absence of long barrows seems to suggest also that 
the Devonians of these days were of a different race to the long- 
barrow builders — possibly the direct descendants of the later 
Palaeolithic men, supplanted and driven into the corners of the 
country by the Long Heads as they were supplanted by the Eound 
Heads, and, as in historic times, Kelt and Saxon were, in turns, 
drivers and driven. 3 
And though we have no long barrows, we have interments of a 
peculiar character which it is difficult to assign to any later period. 
I refer particularly to chambered round barrows, and to interments 
known as Giants' Graves at Scilly, 4 and elsewhere. The comparative 
chronology of these has been clearly established by the researches 
of Mr. W. C. Borlase, particularly at Chapel Karn Brea. Here a 
kist-vaen was found above the original chamber, resting on the 
mound raised to cover the earlier interment ; this again being sur- 
1 Canon Greenwell, British Barrows, p. 479. 2 Ibid. p. 480. 
3 In historic times all the great invasions of England have been from the 
south coast ; and thence the invading wedge has been driven home until the 
shattered fragments of the inhabitant races have found a shelter in the remote 
regions known in later times as Cornwall, "Wales, and Cumbria. There seems 
no adequate reason why the pre-historic invasions, which we know took place, 
should not have followed the same course. 
" Westward the tide of empire takes its way." 
4 Dr. Borlase, Scilly Isles, p. 17. 
