22 CRANIA BEITANNICA. [CHAÎ. II.
men somewliat pentagonal from the sqiiareness of the forehead (which is rather narrow), the
prominence of the cheek-hones, and the narro-vraess and prominence of the chia: nose long,
thin and high, hnt often truly aquñüie: eyebrows promiaent, as though the frontal sians were
largely developed. Men generally rather short, large-honed, and often square-shouldered, hut not
bulky; light, wfry and active*." In a more recent communication to the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland, ia which Dr. Beddoe gives a summary of the ethnology of that country from the time
of the Romans, he states the general results of Ms 'personal investigations in these terms :—
" Black eyes and black hair are rare, excopt where Celtic blood may be supposed to preponderate.
Hazel and light brown eyes, especially when conjoined with brown or flaxen hah-, belong
usually to the Teutons. In both races, the majority have blue or grey eyes, but dark grey
belongs especially to the Celts. Bed hair occurs everywhere; but the colour is more common,
and also brighter and stronger, among some of the Celtic populations. YeUow and hght brown
hair are found in both races, but flaxen, and a Hght sandy red, belong to the Saxons and their
kindred. The colour of the eyelashes seems to be a character of some importance; they are
generally Mght in the Saxon, even where the hafr and eyes incline to be dark. Having fotmd
a great and pretty constant difference between the members of the two races in these respects,
I feel constrained to believe that complexional characters are, to a great extent, hereditary in
the peoples to which they belong, irrespectively of the climatic and other agencies which may
be at work upon themt-"
* Op. cit. pp. 26, 27. It is to be hoped that Dr. Beddoe
win continue to pursue, extend and perfect this interesting inquiry,
in wlúch he has engaged with so much zeal and instruction.
His arrangement has some appearance of complexity,
hut perhaps this is not greater than the diversity of
the natiu-al phenomena to be methodized requires. In makmg
the colour of the eyes, which appears less conspicuous, the
basis of his classification, he agrees with Mr. Price, whose
opinion is that it is a more steady and decided characteristic
than that of the hair.
f "On the Ancient and Modem Ethnography of Scotland."
—Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Professor Phillips's careful observations on the present inhabitants
of Yorkshire, although not strictly appertaining to
our present consideration, are of far too much value and importance
to the inquiry with which we are occupied, to be
omitted. "We therefore introduce the passage entire in this
place :—
" I f , without regard to any real or supposed evidence of
their national origin, we attempt to class the actual population
of Yorkshire into natural groups, we shall find, independent
of Irish immigrants, three main types frequently
distinct, but as often confused by interchange of elementary
features.
" 1. Tall, large-boned, muscular persons ; visage long, angidar;
complexion fair, or florid; eyes blue or grey; hair
light, brown, or reddish.
" Such persons in all parts of the country foim a considerable
part of the population. In the North Riding, from the
eastern to the western mountains, they are plentiful. Blue-eyed
families prevail very much about Lincoln.
" 2. Person robust; visage oval, full, and rounded; nose
often slightly aquilme; complexion somewhat embrowned,
florid J eyes brown or grey; hair brown or reddish. In the
West Riding, especially in the elevated districts, very powerful
men have these characters.
" 3 . Persons of lower stature and smaller proportions; visage
short, rounded; complexion embrowned; eyes very dark,
elongated; hair very dark. (Such eyes and hair are commonly
called black.) Individuals having these characters occur in
the lower grounds of Yorkshire, as in the valley of the Aire
below Leeds, in the Vale of the Derwent, and the level regions
south of Y^ork. They are still more frequent in Nottinghamshii
e and Leicestershire, and may be said to abound amidst
the true Anghans of Norfolk and Sufl'olk. The physical characters
here traced cannot be, as Dr. Prichard conjectures in a
parallel case in Germany, the efl"ect of some centuries of residence
in towns, for they are spread hke an epidemic among the rural
and secluded population as much as among the dwellers in
towns. XTnless we suppose such varieties of appearance to
spring up among the blue-eyed races, we must regard them as
a legacy from the Roman colonists and the older Britons,
amongst whom, as already stated, the Iberian element was
conjectnrally admitted.
" Adopting this latter view, there is no difficulty in regard
to the other groups. They are of North German and Scandinavian
origin, and the men of Yorkshire inherit the physical
organization, and retain many of the peculiarities of language
of their adventurous sires. In the words employed, in the
vowel sounds, the elisions, and the construction of sentences,
the Yorkshire dialects ofl'er interesting analogies to the Old
English of Shakspeare and Chaucer, the Anglo-Saxon of the
Chronicle, and the Norse, as it is preserved to us by the Icelanders."—
Rivers, Mountains and Sea Coast of Yorkshire, by
John PhilUps, F.R.S., p. 261, 1853.
CHAP. II. ] VIEWS OF PRECEDING OBSERVERS. 23
We have now quoted at suflcient length descriptions and opinions bearing more or less
upon the people who first inhabited the forests and wilds of these Islands, after they had been
rendered fit, in the subKme plans of the Divine benevolence, for the extension of inteUigent
happiness, by making them the abode of men. Of the Imperial invaders of these prunitive
people and their physical characters, a more brief account may be given. In the thirty-second
Table of his Decades, Blumenbach presents an etching of the skuU of a Roman praitorian
soldier, which bears the appearance of genuineness, and is thus described:—General form very
fine and symmetrical; calvarium subglobose, terminating anteriorly in a forehead elegantly
smoothed; glabella and superciliary arches moderately prominent; nasal bones of a medium
form, neither depressed nor aquOine; cheek-bones descending gently from the lower and outer
margin of the orbits, not protuberant as in Negroes, nor broadly expanded as in Mongols;
jaws witli the alveolar arches and rows of teeth weU-roimded; external occipital protuberance
very broad and prominent. Sandifort also figures a Roman skuU, which he describes as
follows:—The receptacle of the brain has an oblong form. The forehead, broad and smooth,
rises up perpendicularly. The vertex also is even, except at the posterior part, where it ascends
a httle. The sides of the calvarium ai-e globose*. Dr. W. E. Edwards, founding his views
upon the busts of the first Emperors, who were descended from ancient families, and not like
their successors of foreign races, determines this to be the physiognomy of the Roman head:
The vertical diameter is short, and consequently the face is broad: as the summit of the cranium
is rather flat, and the lower edge of the jaw aknost horizontal, the contom- of the face seen in
fr-ont approaches greatly to a squai-e. This quach-ate configm-ation is an essential character.
The lateral parts above the ears are swoln out; the forehead low; the nose truly aquiline, i. e.
with the curvattu-e beginning towards the top and ending before reaching the point, the base
line being horizontal. The fore part of the chin is rounded. In his journey into Italy this
writer had scarcely entered the Papal territories before he and his feUow-traveUers were unexpectedly
sm-prised to meet with numbers of individuals all along the route who represented the
ancient Romans. The resemblance, which extended to both sexes and aU classes, was not confined
to the bust, but embraced the stature also;—the Romans having had a moderate staturef. The
testimony of Dr. Wiseman is to the same e f i ' e e t " Examine the series of Imperial busts in
the Capitol, and you cannot fail to discover a striking type, essentially the same fr-om the
wreathed image of Scipio's tomb to Trajan or Vespasian, consisting in a large and flat head; a
low and wide forehead; a face, in childhood heavy and round—later, broad and square; a short
and thick neck; and a stout and broad figm-e. Nor need we go far to find their descendants;
they are to be found every day in the streets, principally among the bm-gesses, or middle class,
the most invariable portion of any populationi." Dr. Morton confines his remarks to the weU-
* G. Sandifort, Tabuloe Cvaniorum diversarum Nationum.
t We perceive Dr. Nott has quoted the above remarks of
Dr. Edwards, and appends a remarkable confirmation of their
truth, referring to an American sailor of twenty years' standing,
who spoke Enghsh without foreign accent, and who called
upon liim at Mobile in South Carolina to have a dislocated
arm set. He presented such an appearance when stripped, as
to call to mind the beau-ideal of a Roman soldier. When interrogated
as to where he was bom, he replied, in a deep
sonorous voice, " In Rome, sir."—Types of Mankind, p. 98.
Niebuhr assures us, " It is a mistake to believe that the Ita-
Uans are very unlike their ancestors."—Lectures on Ancient
Ethnography, by Dr. Schmitz, vol. ii. p. 11, 1853.
X Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion. According
to M. Maury, and other writers on modem Rome, it
is to a particular division of the inhabitants, the well-made
Transteverini, who by tradition claim a descent from the ancient
Romans, that we are to look for their faithful living representatives
:—" Le type romain s'est conservé d'une manière
frappante dans la population du Transtevère, à Rome ; et, sans
remonter si haut, les admirables portraits de personnages historiques
que nous ont conservés les grands peintres du XV" et du