DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 573 



some posthumous pressure. Owing* to this distortion the line of 

 maximum breadth can only be taken approximatively ; we are, 

 however, justified in saying- that it lay low down in the skull- walls, 

 and that the parietal tubera were not well marked, though they are 

 so sometimes even in male skulls of this type. 



f asciarum usum, cunaruin lateribus utrinque alligentur, Belgis oblongiora cseteris pro- 

 pemodum reservantur permanentve capita, quod matres suos puerulos fasciis involutes 

 in latere et temporibus potissimum dormire sinant.' The American ethnologist, Morton, 

 in his ' Crania Americana/ p. 115, 1839, referred the production of the parieto-occi- 

 pital asymmetry, which he observed as often on one side as the other, in the skulls of 

 modern Peruvians, in part at least ' to the manner in which the child is placed in the 

 cradle/ See also Nott and Gliddon, 'Types of Mankind/ p. 325, 1854; 'Indigenous 

 Races/ pp. 334-336, 1857. Dr. Gosse in his ' Essai sur le Deformations artificielles 

 du Crane,' p. 74, 1855, refers both to Vesalius and to Morton, and speaking of Faction 

 prolongee de ce genre de berceau, le compagnon des peoples nomades sur I'aplatisse- 

 ment du derriere de la tete, he adds, Les anciens habitants de la Scandinavie et de la 

 Caledonie devaient s'en servir si I'on en juge par la forme de leurs cranes. Pro- 

 fessor Daniel Wilson of Toronto, who does not seem to have been acquainted at this 

 time (1857) with Dr. Gosse' s work, explained the asymmetry of certain ancient British 

 brachy-cephali similarly. See Canadian Journal, vol. ii. p. 406; Edinb. Phil. Journal, 

 N.S. vii. p. 25, Jan. 1858. In 1862 (Canadian Journal, Sept., < On Ethnical Forms 

 and Artificial Deformations ') he suggested that peculiar modes of carrying the infant 

 during suckling, or peculiarities of head-dress, or carriage of burdens on the head 

 might, as well as the use of the cradle-board, produce this undesigned though artificial 

 deformity. In a later paper (Canadian Journal, 1864, p. 403) Professor Wilson says 

 that this deformity is usually on the left side. Dr. E. Zuckerkandl (Reise der Oster. 

 Fregatte Novara, p. 43 seqq., 1875) has also found parieto-occipital asymmetry to be 

 usually sinistral ; and more frequent in brachy-cephalous and large than in dolicho- 

 cephalous and small skulls ; he explains its occurrence by a reference to pressure inter 

 partum. It appears to me to be more reasonable to explain the greater frequency of 

 sinistral deformation in children by a reference to ' dextral pre-eminence ' in the 

 mothers. Savages are at least as distinctively 'right handed' as civilised races. See 

 Weisbach, Reise der Osterr. Fregatte Novara, 1867, Abtheil. ii. p. 181, where the 

 author speaks of ' die starkere entwickelung der rechten Seite die wohl bei alien 

 Wilden beobachten war ; ' and Ogle, Med. Chir. Trans. 1871, vol. liv. of Andamanese, 

 Fuegians, and Eskimos. The wish to keep the right arm free causes the left arm to 

 be usually employed for carrying a child ; the pressure of a sling used in aid of the left 

 arm would come to bear mainly on the left side of the child's head, and the observed 

 flattening would thus be accounted for. It is by no means rare, as Professor Wilson 

 has observed, to find instances of unilateral parieto-occipital deformity produced arti- 

 ficially, though unintentionally, in modern times. A modern skull, as it is believed 

 of an Italian, with very well marked flattening of the right side of the region specified, 

 may be seen in the Oxford University Museum, No. 865 a. A cast of the interior of 

 this skull shows that the flattening has not affected the occipital lobes proper, i. e. 

 the parts of the brain which are lodged in the superior occipital squama and lie behind 

 the internal perpendicular fissure, but has left them overlapping the cerebellum just as 

 in typical dolicho- cephalic brains. The part of the brain which has been flattened is 

 that which lies between the plane of the apex of the fissure of Sylvius and that of the 

 internal perpendicular fissure. It has often been suggested, and, as regards alterations 

 of nervous structures, not altogether unreasonably, that such artificially produced 

 alterations may in course of time become hereditary. And it may be possible to ex- 

 plain the brachy-cephalism of most nomad and indeed of some other races by a 

 reference to the mode of carnage in infancy. For Artificial Cranial Deformities pur- 

 posively produced, see pp. 594 seqq , infra. 



