Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/333

 10 s. VIIL OCT. 5, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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features, build, and complexion), and suggested to my mind Samoyed descent. These people were dirty, and singularly unkempt in appearance. Evidently they belonged to a very low class and were addicted to looking on the wine which is red. A companion of theirs showed their characteristics in a less accentuated form. He was somewhat taller, less "stocky," and decidedly cleaner. A neatly dressed paysanne in the same carriage was equally dark, but her skin was clear, and she was tall and supple, with well - moulded head ,nd clean-cut features. Several days later I met another brunette with very dark hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and eyes of shadowy Irish blue.

Does the Irish type which suggests a chimpanzee occur in Brittany ?

In Lincolnshire, where the blood of the " old standards " is generally supposed to be almost purely Teutonic, swarthy families are in reality far from rare, and many fair 'families have some swarthy members, or members combining blue or light - hazel eyes with dark-brown hair. There is the tall dark type, in which the hair is occa- sionally a true black, and a short dark type also. The latter has often a retrousse nose and other irregular features. Both these dark races are generally more lively in manner than the fairer people, especially the smaller type. Probably the descent of every family in the county is anything but racially pure, combining English, Danish, Celtic, and pre - Celtic blood with varied strains received from William the Norman's mixed multitude and later immigrants from the Continent. It is, therefore, strange to observe how definite in outward appearance many of the types remain. Some of the dark people, like some of the fiery-haired had no kinship whatever with the ordinary Lincolnshire type.
 * and hot-tempered fair ones, look as if they

''Foreigner" as used in Lincolnshire 'refers to difference of locality rather than difference of blood. A man is a "foreigner " in any part of the county if he comes from a, place eighteen or twenty miles distant or even less provided his district is un- familiar to the person speaking of him.

J. M.

That the Neolithic races were generally small and dolichocephalic, at every period, seems fairly certain ; but that there was

1-ever, in this country, a second, brachy- aphalic race in Neolithic times, is more than doubtful. Its existence is assumed by some

writers, but the specimens found have not been sufficiently numerous to prove it. The Celts were tall and broad-headed, but they must have long passed the Stone Age before they settled in Britain. The Picts were probably identical with the later Neolithic races ; but I know of no pre-Celtic race in this country bearing any resemblance to the Anglo-Saxons, though the Celts had some of the physical features of the later Scandi- navians. Meanwhile, may I again protest against the use of the barbarous word '* racial," which has no root in any language, ancient or modern ? The late Archdeacon Thornton proposed " ethnical " as a sub- stitute, which I have ever since used.

J. FOSTER PALMER. 8, Royal Avenue, S.W.

TOMBSTONES AND INSCRIPTIONS : THEIR PRESERVATION (10 S. viii. 201). Under this head I may perhaps be allowed an inquiry with regard to a stone said to have been removed from Epworth Churchyard within the memory of persons now living, but when, or by whom, nobody can say. It was to the memory of one Richard Towris, and it bore this inscription :

Who lies here ? Who do you think ?

Richard Towris, and he liked drink.

Drink ? Drink, for why ?

Because Richard Towris was always dry. I seem to have been familiar with this epitaph (or something like it) all my life. Does it occur elsewhere than at Epworth ? Towris (Towers ?) is known to have been a common surname at Epworth in the first half of the eighteenth century, but no record exists, apparently, of the death there of any person to whom the epitaph could apply.

C. C. B.

When I was an errand boy in Westmin- ster in 1855, there were hundreds of head- stones (mostly made of Portland slabs) in the graveyard situated at the west end of St. Margaret's, i.e., to the north-west of the Abbey. We lads used to play leapfrog over many of them. Later they were buried some eighteen inches below the surface, each immediately over its respective grave. MR. HARLAND-OXLEY will no doubt be able to give the exact date when, after an average existence of a hundred years or more, these stones were themselves buried.

HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter.

GREENSTED CHURCH, ONGAR : OAK v CHESTNUT (10 S. viii. 26, 154, 196). In confirmation of the statements of the work-