pertaining to what he designates "the long-headed aborigines of Ireland."*

During the fourteen years that have intervened since the first publication of my ideas on some of the questions now referred to, in the course of much familiar correspondence with the authors of the Crania Britannica, and others engaged in similar researches, I have endeavoured to help forward the discovery of scientific truth, wholly irrespective of any theories or systems of my own; not unmindful of the Laureate's rebuke::

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be.

Interrupted, as I was, in favourite studies, by transfer to other and widely contrasting scenes, I have looked on from a distance, while many zealous and enthusiastic labourers have been devoting themselves to different departments of prehistoric research, which only a few years since were unheeded or discountenanced. In 1850, the question was started in the Ethnological sub-section of the British Association, whether "craniological" papers should be permitted a hearing. But now, after an interval of twelve years characterized by extensive research in the special department of scientific inquiry under review, which, in Britain at least, had previously met with little encouragement; I may be permitted to feel some gratification in finding one of my "guesses at truth," in which I ran counter to the deductions of continental as well as British scientific observers, finding, thus far, so much confirmation from independent sources. I await with interest the completion of the labours of Dr. Thurnam and Mr. Davis, on their admirable national work; and especially the summing up of their deductions from the data there accumulated; prepared to accept the truth, whether it conform to preconceived theories or not. But meanwhile the evidence produced on various hands appears so far to coincide in revealing a dolichocephalic, if not the kumbecephalic form of cranium, as the predominant one in the chambered barrows: characterised by Mr. Davis as "unquestionably of vast antiquity;" and without doubt the most ancient examples of regular British sepulture hitherto explored.

It has been shown by repeated references in the previous pages,

* Ethnology of the Ancient Irish; by W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A.

+ Proceedings of the Acad. Nat. Sciences, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 43.

that the idea of artificial causes supplying one means of accounting for aberrant cranial forms is already receiving very general acceptance, and it appears from a reference of Mr. Davis that Dr. L. A. Gosse has not only illustrated this subject at some length in relation to the extreme compression of the occiput, but incidentally notices the peculiarity referred to in Scottish and Scandinavian skulls, and traces it to the same probable source of the cradle-board. His remarks are : "Passant dans l'ancien continent, ne tardons-nous pas à reconnaitre que ce berceau plat et solide y a produit des effets analogues. Les anciens habitants de la Scandinavie et de la Calédonie devaient s'en servir, si l'on en juge par la forme de leurs crânes."*

There is perhaps, a danger, now that the operation of such undesigned influences is recognised, that more may be ascribed to them than is legitimate. Such was undoubtedly the effect on Dr. Morton's mind from his familiarity with the results of artificial deformation on American crania, coupled perhaps with the seductive influences of a favourite hypothesis. In his latest recorded opinions, when commenting on some of the abnormal forms of Peruvian crania, he remarks: "I at first found it difficult to conceive that the original rounded skull of the Indian could be changed into this fantastic form; and was led to suppose that the latter was an artificial elongation of a head remarkable for its length and narrowness. I even supposed that the long-headed Peruvians were a more ancient people than the Inca tribes, and distinguished from them by their cranial configuration. In this opinion I was mistaken. Abundant means of observation and comparison have since convinced me that all these variously-formed heads were originally of the same shape, which is characteristic of the aboriginal race from Cape Horn to Canada, and that art alone has caused the diversities among them." In contrast to such sweeping deductions, the observations of Sir Robert H. Schomburgk on the Maopityans, or Frog Indians, of British Guiana, are well worthy of consideration. They are the remnant of a nearly extinct tribe. Of their cranial formation he remarks: "The flatness of the head, and consequently the long face and short circumference, is peculiar to the tribe. I have not been able to learn, upon the most minute inquiries, that the form is given to the head by artificial

* Dr. L. A. Gosse, quoted by Mr. Davis "Essai sur les Déformations artificielles du Cráne," p. 74.

+ Physical Type of the American Indian. Schoolcraft: p. 326.