This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
238
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

domestic animals, nor any of the cultivated cereals, nor pottery.

The few instances of food refuse-heaps here brought forward as evidence, in support of the theory that the people of the Transition period were the surviving remnants of the old Palæolithic people of Britain, are by no means exhausted, and I believe that a more careful investigation of promising ground, especially submerged forests and old habitable land-areas, would produce further corroborative materials. Shell-mounds on land are not readily recognized, being often covered with a coating of decayed vegetation, but nevertheless they exist in many localities along the shores of Britain and those of the adjacent continent. On this phase of the subject Mr. Clement Reid's book on Submerged Forests may be consulted with advantage. Although the best lesson to be derived from his large experience is to show how much more remains to be done in such matters, especially by carefully watching the contents of dock-excavations.

If we glance for a moment at the earlier archæological discoveries in this country, we shall see that they bear out the above interpretation of the facts. As early as 1850 Sir Daniel Wilson maintained, as the result of an investigation of the craniological materials then available, that the earliest British people were characterized by markedly elongated and narrow skulls, to which he gave the