PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 291 



though full, is slightly vertical. The occipital development of the Fiji cranium 

 is the more interesting as we are now familiar with the fact that an artificially 

 flattened occiput is of common occurrence among the islanders of the Pacific 

 ocean. "In the Malay race," says Dr. Pickering, "a more marked peculiarity, 

 and one very generally observable, is the elevated occiput, and its slight pro- 

 jection beyond the line of the neck. The Mongolian traits are heightened arti- 

 ficially in the Ohinooks ; but it is less generally known that a slight pressure is 

 often applied to the occiput by the Polynesians, in conformity Avith the Malay 

 standard."* Dr. Nott, in describing the skull of a Kanaka of the Sandwich 

 Islands Avho died at the Marine Hospital at Mobile, mentions his being struck 

 by its singular occipital formation ; but tliis he learned was due to an artificial 

 flattening which the islander had stated to his medical attendants in the hospital, 

 was habitually practiced in his family. t According to Dr. Davis, it is traceable 

 to so simple a source as the Kanaka mother's habit of supporting the head of 

 her nursling in the palm of her hand.f Whatever be the cause, the fact is now 

 well established. The occipital flattening is clearly defined in at least three of 

 the Kanaka skulls in the Mortonian collection: No. 1300, a male native of the 

 Sandwich Islands, aged about forty; No. 1308, apparently that of a woman, 

 from- the same localitj^; and in No. 695, a girl of Oahu, of probably twelve 

 years of age, which is markedly unsymmetrical, and with the flattening on the 

 left side of the painetal and occipital bones. . The Washington collection in- 

 cludes fourteen Kanaka skulls, besides others from various islands of the Pacific, 

 among which several examples of the same artificial formation occur : e. g., No. 

 4587, a large male skull, distorted and unsymmetrical; and No. 4367, (female?) 

 from an ancient cemetery at Wailuka, Maui, in which the flattened occiput is 

 very obvious. 



The traces of purposed deformation of the head among the islanders of the 

 Pacific have an additional interest in their relation to one possible source of 

 South American population by oceanic migration, suggested by philological and 

 other independent evidence. But for our present purpose the peculiar value of 

 those modified skulls lies in the disclosures of influences operating alike unde- 

 signedly, and with a well-defined purpose, in producing the very same cranial 

 conformation among races occupying the British Islands in ages long anterior to 

 earliest history; and among the savage tribes of America and the simple island- 

 ers of the Pacific in the present day. They illustrate, with peculiar vividness, 

 the primitive condition of social life out of which the civilization of modern 

 Europe has been educed; and, while they pertain to more modern eras than the 

 traces of human art contemporaneous with the extinct mammals of the drift, 

 they revivify for us, with even clearer distinctness than the rude implements of 

 flint and stone found in early graves, the condition of the British Islanders of 

 prehistoric times. 



PARTT lai. 



PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



PRIMITIVE ART-TRACES. 



The evidences of an assumed cranial and physical unity pervading the abo- 

 rigines of the American continent disappear upon a careful scrutiny, and the 



" Pickcring'6 Races of Man, p. 45. 



+Types of Mankind, p. 43G. 



X Crania Britannica, Dec. Ill, pi. 24, (4.) 



