PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY, 289 



height of her singuharly formed head was prohably an artificial pad over which 

 the hair was drawn. 



Compared Avith such extreme deformation, the traces of artificial change on 

 the forms of British skulls are trifling. They are, however, all the more im- 

 portant from their liability to be confounded with true congenital forms, as in 

 the case of the flattened occiput. Dr. Davis has applied the term " parieto- 

 occipital flatness," where the results of artificial compression in certain British 

 skulls extend over the parietals with the upper portion of the occipital, and he 

 appears to regard this as something essentially distinct from the vertical occi- 

 put.* But it is a form of common occurrence in Indian skulls, and is in reality 

 the most inartificial of all the results of the undesigned pressure of the cradle- 

 board. This will be understood by a very simple experiment. If the observer 

 lie down on the floor, without a pillow, and then ascertain what part of the back 

 of the head touches the ground, he will find that it is the portion of the occipvit 

 immediately above the lambdoidal suture, and not the occipital bone. When the 

 Indian mother places a suiiicicutly high pillow for her infant, the tendency of 

 the constant pressure w'ill be k) produce the vertical occiput; but where, as is 

 more frequently the case, the board has a mere cover of moss or soft leather, 

 then the result will be just such an oblique parietal flattening as is shown on a 

 British skull from the lemaikable tumulus near Littleton Drew, Wiltshire.! 



But there are other sources of modification of the human skull in infancy, 

 even more common than the cradle-board. More than one of the predominant 

 head-forms in Normandy and Belgium are now traced to artificial bandaging; 

 and by many apparently trifling and unheeded causes, consequent on national 

 customs, nursing usages, or the caprices of dress and fashion, the form of the 

 head may be modified in the nursery. The constant laying of the infant to 

 rest on its side, the pressure in the same direction in nursing it, along with the 

 fashion of cap, hat, or wrappage, may all influence the shape of head among 

 civilized nations, and in certain cases tend as much to exaggerate the naturally 

 dolichocephalic skull as the Indian cradle-board increases the short diameter of 

 the opposite type. Such artificial cranial forms as that designated by M. Foville, 

 the Tc'te annulaire, may have predominated for many centuries throughout 

 certain rural districts of France, solely from the unreasoning conformity with 

 which the rustic nurse adhered to the traditional or prescriptive bandages to 

 which he ascribes that distortion. All experience shows that such usages are 

 among the least eradicable, and long survive the shock of revolutions that change 

 dynasties and efface more important national characteristics. 



The effect, as we have already seen, which a constant familiarity Avith the 

 results of extreme artificial deformation on American crania produced on Dr. 

 Morton's mind, Avas to lead him to ignore all distinctions of ethnical form, and 

 to retract his earlier idea that the elongated PeruA^ian crania. Avere artificial ex- 

 aggerations of a head of great natural length. Originally he had adopted the 

 conclusion that the long-headed Peruvians were a more ancient people than 

 AA'hat he called the Inca tribes, and distinguished from them by their cranial 

 configitration; but this he abandoned at a later period, and assumed that CA-ery 

 skull found on the American continent, AvhatcA^er might be the extreme A'ariation 

 in opposite directions from his assumed typical form, had been naturally a short 

 globular skidl, Avith Ioav retreating forehead and A^ertical occiput. ^ On the fallacy 

 invoh-ed in such a conclusion it is unnecessary to make further comment, as the 

 evidence Avhich appears to confute it has already been produced. But the dis- 

 clositres of llie essentially diverse types of skidl in the ancient cemeteries of 

 Peru appear to me to present some highly interesting analogies to th<3 discov- 

 eries made in British barrows. The repeated opportunities I have enjoyed of 



* Nat. Hist, necicw, Jiilv. 1862. Athenaum, Sept. 27. 18W, 11.41)2. 



t Crania Brilannica, Decade 111, Plate 24. 



19c 



