278 



PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



short, a character wliicli appertains to tlie entire calvarium, but is most concen- 

 irated in the parietaLs, to wliich the abn:ptly ascending portion of the occipital 

 lends its influence. The widest part of the calvarium is about an inch behind, 

 and as much above the auditory foramen, and, when we view it in front, we per- 

 ceive it gradually to expand from the outer angular process of the frontal to the 

 point now indicated." The entire parieto-occipital region presents in profile an 

 abrupt vertical line ; but, when viewed vertically, it tapers considerably more 

 towards the occiput than is usual in crania of the same class. 



Yls. S. 



Fig. 9. 



A comparison of this skull, recovered from an ancient British grave, with the 

 one obtained in an Indian ossuary in Barric, in Upper Canada, shows the squarer 

 form of the British skull, when seen in profile, dependent in part on the more 

 elevated and well arched frontal bone But, in the vertical view, the Indian 

 skull shows its extreme brachycephalic character ; being at once shorter and 

 broader than the British one, though the latter is one of the most strongly 

 marked of its class. The vertical character of the occiput is also strikingly dis 

 played. In other examples the flattening chiefly afiects the parietal bones 

 extending in an oblique line towards the coronal suture. 



The origin of both, as artificial forms superinduced on a naturally short anc^ 

 broad type of skull, I feel no hesitation in believing to be traceable to the same 

 kind of rigid cradle-board as is in constant use among many of the Indian tribes 

 of America, and which produces precisely similar results. Its mode of opera- 

 tion, in eff"ecting the various forms of oblique and vertical occiputs, will be hesi 

 considered when describing some of the phenomena of compressed Indian 

 crania ; but another feature of the Juniper Green skull, which is even more ob- 

 vious in that from Lesmurdie, in the same collection, is an irregularity amounting 

 to a marked inequality in the development of the two sides. This occurs in 

 skulls which have been altered by posthumous compression ; but the recovery 

 of both the examples referred to from stone cists precludes the idea of their 

 having be(?n affected by the latter cause; and since I was first led to suspect 

 the modification of the occiput, and the exaggeration of the characteristic pro- 

 portions of British brachycephalic crania by artificial means, familiarity with 

 those of the Flathead Indians, as well as other ancient and modern artificially 

 distorted American crania, has led me to recognize in them the constant occur- 

 rence of the same unsymmetrical inequality in opposite sides of the head. 



The inequality in the development of the opposite sides of the above skulls 

 belongs to the same class of deformations as the well-known distortions produced 



