410 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



la depression de l'occiput etait loin d'etre aussi generate et aussi marquee que 

 parmi les Incas et que chez les cranes examines par Meyen ; car dans plusieurs 

 d'entre eux, la tete est plutot normalement developpee en arriere. Ce qui 

 m'etonne, " he continues, "c'estqu' independamment de la transmission 

 hereditaire, Morton n'ait pas fait jouer un role plus general a Taction pro- 

 longee de ce genre de berceau, le compagnon des peuples nomades sur l'apla- 

 tissement du derriere de la tete, qu'il considere comme un caractere normal 

 du type americain."* 



Dr. J. B. Davis also writes that though "this position of Morton's is no 

 doubt founded in truth, yet it must be allowed to be liable to numerous ex- 

 ceptions." His doubts appear to have been awakened by the fact which he 

 mentions, that the crania of Americans, figured by Sandifort and Milne- 

 Edwards, (one of them given as a typical skull), are both distinguished by a 

 considerable occipital projection.! 



Prof. Daniel Wilson, of Canada, in a recent interesting paper on the 

 Cranial Type of the American Aborigines, J tells us that he has carefully ex- 

 amined twenty-nine Indian skulls, three only of which he regards as brachy- 

 (ephalic. " One of these three, a very remarkable and massive skull, was 

 turned up at Barrie, on Lake Simcoe, with, it is said, upwards of two hundred 

 others. It differs from all the other Indian crania, in exhibiting the vertical 

 occiput so very strikingly, that when laid resting on it, it stands more firmly 

 than in any other position." He thinks there can be little doubt that the 

 flattened occiput of this skull is the result of artificial compression of a much 

 more decided nature than that of the cradle-board of the papoose. 



Further on, he says, " I am struck, in the majority of the examples ex- 

 amined, with the total absence of any approximation to the flattened occiput." 

 Fifteen of the crania referred to exhibit a more o.r les.5 decided posterior pro- 

 jection of the occiput, twelve of these being markedly so, and seven of them 

 presenting such a prolongation of it, as constituted one of the most striking 

 features in one class of ancient Scottish crania, which chiefly led to the sug- 

 gestion of the term kumbecephale." * * * " I think it extremely pro- 

 lxable that further investigation will tend to the conclusion that the vertical 

 or flattened occiput, instead of being a typical characteristic, pertains entirely 

 to the class of artificial modifications of the natural cranium familiar to the 

 American ethnologist, alike in the disclosures of ancient graves, and in the 

 ustoms of widely separated living tribes." 



From the details which I have presented above, it will be seen that the 

 opinions upon this subject, entertained by Dr. Morton, cannot be substantiated 

 by the aboriginal American crania in the Academy's collection. The verti- 

 cally flattened occiput is by no means a distinctive character of these crania ; 

 on the contrary, it is only an occasional feature among them, and is exhibited 

 also by the skulls of other, and distant races of men. In fact, the occipital 

 region of our American Indian skulls exhibits quite a variety of forms. In 

 some, as we have already seen, the flatness is located superiorly, affecting 

 equally the posterior superior part of the ossa-parietalia, and the upper part 

 of the os occipitis ; in others, and they are comparatively few, the flattening 

 is directly behind, and is vertical ; in a third variety the flatness is confined 

 wholly to the basal portion of the occipital bone. In some of the skulls the 

 occiput is evenly rounded, in the direction of the longitudinal periphery, the 

 transverse diameter, behind the bony meati, being comparatively small ; in 

 others it is full and globular. If the reader will place the Crania Americana 

 before him, and compare together the outline representations of the posterior 

 part of the skull in the different tribes of Indians, he will be struck with the 



* Essai sur les Deformations Artificielles du Crane. Paris, 1855, pp. 72, 74. 



t Crania Britannica, Decade 3, p. 



X Canadian Journal of Industry, Science, and Art. November, 1857, pp. 425, 427. 



i Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, p 109. 



[Sept. 



