country, viz. a long-headed, dark Irish stock, on the west of the Shannon, and a fair-haired, globular-headed stock, on the north-east of that river. But this precise distribution of the different races has not been corroborated by subsequent researches. So far as I know, the opinion of Professor Huxley, published forty years ago, still holds good. "As the evidence stands at present," writes the Professor, "I am fully disposed to identify the ancient population of Ireland with the longbarrow and 'river-bed' elements of the population of England, and with the longheaded and 'kumbecephalic ' inhabitants of Scotland; and to believe that the 'roundbarrow' or Belgic element of the Britannic people never colonized Ireland in sufficient numbers to make its presence ethnically felt." The fact that the beaker type of sepulchral ceramic has very rarely, if at all, been found in the prehistoric burials of Ireland, together with the rarity of brachy cephalic skulls from that country, supplies fresh evidence in support of the above exposition of Irish ethnology by Professor Huxley. As cremation advanced the beaker type of ceramic would be gradually superseded, and this might have taken place before these Goidelic invaders had penetrated as far as Ireland and found time to revolutionize the life and language of its original inhabitants.
According to Dr. Thurnam's cranial statistics, the range of the cephalic index
