PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 281 



accordmj2:ly, provided with pome suitable prer^ents, I went. The newborn child 

 had all the characterictics of the mother's tribe. It was not quite an hour old 

 when I saw it, and the flatn(;ss of its head as compared with the heads of other 

 tribes, was very remarkable."* Such a narrative, resting as it does on unques- 

 tionabh? authority, shows the danger of error in rcfc-rring all seemingly abnormal 

 cranial forms to artificial causes, and might almost tempt the theorist to recur to 

 the idea entertained by Hippocrates, relative to the Macrocephali of the Crimea, 

 that long heads ultimately became so natural among them that the favorite form 

 was perpetuated by ordinary generation. To have rendered the observations 

 complete, however, it would have been desirable to have had a further report on 

 the shipe of the infant's head some time after birth, so as to determine if it were 

 entirely due to the inherited typical head-form of the mother's tribe, and not to 

 an unusual amount of compression incident to the circumstances of its birth. 



When the pressure is not, as in the processes operating at birth, temporary, 

 but continuous or repeatedly applied in the same direction, at brief intervals, as 

 in nursing entirely at one breast, a want of uniformity is certain to result. The 

 dissimilarity in the two sides of the head is strongly marked in Flathead skulls 

 which have been subjected to great compression. This is clearly trrceable to the 

 difficulty of subjecting the living and growing head to a perfectly uniform and 

 equable pressure, and to the cerebral mass forcing the skull to expand with it 

 in the direction of least resistance. Ileuce the unsymmetrical form accompany- 

 ing the vertical occiput in the Lesmurdie and Juniper Green skulls. Wherever 

 therefore a very noticeable inequality exists between the two sides of a skull, 

 it may be traced with much probability to designed or accidental compression in 

 infancy, and by its frequent occurrence in any uniform aspect, may, quite as 

 much as the flattened occiput, furnish a clue to customs or modes of nurture 

 among the people to whom it pertains. 



Irregular head-forms are so much concealed by the hair and head-dress that 

 It is only in very marked cases they attract the attention of ordinary observers. 

 But, as I have shown in former publications on this subject, t they are familiar 

 to hat-makers, and frequently include extremely unsymmetrical developments 

 and great inequality in opposite sides of the head. A modern skull in the 

 collection of Dr. Struthers, of Edinburg, exhibits an interesting combination 

 of the proportions of the ancient brachycephalic type, with unsymmetrical con- 

 formation. It measures 7.5 longitudinal diameter, 6.5 parietal diameter, 21.4 

 horizontal circumference, and its greatest breadth is so near the occiput that the 

 truncated form observable in the vertical view of many ancient British crania is 

 produced in its most marked character by the abrupt flattening immediately 

 behind the parietal protuberances, accompanied with inequality in the two sides 

 of the head. It Avas obtained from a grave-digger in Dundee, who stated it tji 

 be that of a middle-aged female whom he had known during life. There was 

 nothiijg particular about her mental development. 



The novel Ibrms thus occurring in modern heads, though chiefly traceable, as 

 I believe, to artificial causes, are not the result of design. But the same is true 

 of the prevalent vertical and obliquely flattened occiput of many ancient and 

 modern American crania, as well as of the Bi'itish brachycephalic class already 

 described. Nor are such changes of the natural form necessarily limited to 

 skulls of short longitudinal diameter, in which this typical characteristic is 

 exaggerated by the pressure of the cradle-board in infancy. Now that this 

 source of modification begins to receive general recognition among craniologists, 

 its influence is assumed as a probable source of the most diverse aberrant forms. 

 Dr. Thuruam, when referring to two skulls of diff<n-ent shapes, recovered from 

 the same group of British barrows, of "a somewhat late though pre-Roman 



* Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xvi, pp. 53, 57. 

 j- Prehistoric Man, vol. ii, p. 312 ; Canadian Journal, vol. vil, 414. 



