284 PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



ignorant for the most part of the very knowledge of metals, or at best in the 

 earliest rudimentary stage of metallurgic arts. They were, in fact, in as unciv- 

 ilized a condition as the rudest forest Indians of America. To prove, therefore, 

 that, like the Red Indian scjuaw, the British allophylian or Celtic mother formed 

 the cradle for her babe of a flat board, to which she bound it, for safety and * 

 facility of nursing, in the vicissitudes of her nomade life — though interesting, 

 like every other recovered glimpse of a long forgotten past — is not in itself a 

 discovery of much significance. But it reminds us how essentially man, even 

 in the most degraded state of wandering savage life, differs from all other 

 animals. The germs of an artificial life are there. External appliances, and 

 the conditions which we designate as domestication in the lower animals, appear 

 to be inseparable from him. The most untutored nomades subject their offspring 

 to many artificial influences, such as have no analogy among the marvellous 

 instinctive operations of the lower animals. It is even not unworthy of notice 

 that man is the only animal to whom a supine position is natural for repose ; and 

 with him, more than any other animal, the head, when recumbent, invariably 

 assumes a position which throws the greatest pressure on the brain case, and 

 not on the malar or maxillary bones. 



It thus appears that the study of cranial forms for ethnological purposes is 

 beset with many complex elements ; and now that the operation of undesigned 

 artificial influences begins to receive an adequate recognition, there is a danger 

 that too much may be ascribed to them, and that the ethnical significance of 

 congenital forms, and their traces even in the modified crania of different types, 

 may be slighted or wholly ignored. Such was undoubtedly the effect on Dr. 

 Morton's mind from his familiarity with the results of artificial deformation on 

 American crania, coupled, perhaps, with the seductive influences of a favorite 

 hypothesis. In his latest recorded opinions, when commenting on some of the 

 abnormal forms of Peruvian crania, he remarks : " I at first found it difficult to 

 conceive that the original rounded skull of the Indian could be changed into this 

 fantastic form, and was led to suppose that the latter was an artificial elongation 

 of a head remarkable for its length and narrowness. I even supposed that the 

 long-headed Peruvians were a more ancient people than the Inca tribes, and 

 distinguished from them by their cranial configuration. In this opinion I was 

 mistaken. Abundant means of observation and comparison have since con- 

 vinced me that all these variously-formed heads were originally of the same 

 shape, which is characteristic of the aboriginal race from Cape Horn to Canada, 

 and that art alone has caused the diversities among them."* It is obvious, how- 

 ever, that Avithout running to the exti-eme of Dr. Morton, who denied, for the 

 American continent, at least, the existence of any true dolichocephalic crania, 

 or, indeed, any essential variation from one assumed typical form, it becomes an 

 important point for the craniologist to determine, if possible, to what extent 

 certain characteristic diversities may be relied upon as the inherited features of 

 a tribe or race, or whether they are not the mere result of artificial causes origi- 

 nating in long perpetuated national customs and nursery usages. If the latter 

 is indeed the case, then they pertain to the materials of archaeological rather 

 than of ethnological deduction, and can no longer be employed as elements of 

 ethnical classification. 



The idea that the peculiar forms of certain ancient European skulls is trace- 

 able to the use of the cradle-board, or other nursing usages, is rapidly gaining 

 ground, with extended observations. My own ideas, formed at an earlier date, 

 were first published in 1857, t but it now appears that the same idea had occurred 

 to Dr. L. A. Grosse, and received by him a wider application. In his " Essai 

 sur les Deformations artificielles du Crane," he has not only illustrated the 



* Physical Type of the American Indian, p. 32G. 



+ Edm. Philosoph. Jour., N. S., Vol. VII, p. 25; Canadian Journal, Vol. II, p. 426. 



