while the Walloons, perhaps descendants of the Belgæ, have a high index,
and some Gauls of classical art are broad-headed.[19]

Skulls of the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age) are mainly
broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic brachycephalic
skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5 inches shorter),
Selaigneaux, and Borreby.[20] Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled
Belgæ on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow
folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belgæ
(Broca's Kymri), and thinks that Gaulish skulls were round, with
beetling brows.[21] Professors Ripley and Sergi, disregarding their
difference in stature and higher cephalic index, identify them with the
short Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.[22]
Might not both, however, have originally sprung from a common stock and
reached Europe at different times?[23]

But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching conclusions
regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At some very remote
period there may have been a Celtic type, as at some further period
there may have been an Aryan type. But the Celts, as we know them, must
have mingled with the aborigines of Europe and become a mixed race,
though preserving and endowing others with their racial and mental
characteristics. Some Gauls or Belgæ were dolichocephalic, to judge by
their skulls, others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a
relative term. Classical observers probably generalised from the higher
classes, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But the
higher classes may have had varying skulls, as well as stature and
colour of hair,[24] and Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed
stock, and a short, dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those
distant ages we must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed