DESCRIPTION OF FIGUllES OF SKULLS. 595 



Professor Busk 1ms, he. infra cit., felicitously suggested the 



restoration of the Liunsean term ' plagio-cephalic ' to this strongly 



marked variety of a strongly brachy-cephalic type. Skulls of 



similar proportions and contour have been procured from three 



or four other round barrows in the East Riding, viz. from 



barrows in the Goodmanham, Flixton, and Marr series; and two 



others, also of the same conformation, ' Rudstone, Ixiii. 6/ and 



' Rudstone, Ixviii. 7,' have been procured from this very series. 



The latter of these two skulls, which belonged to a man past the 



middle period of life and of about 5 ft. 8 in. in stature, goes farther 



have been subjected to it. Further, the fact that in a country so near as France 

 a practice of depressing the head has lasted in Normandy (Retzius, Ethnograph. 

 Schriften., p. 130) and in the non-Iberian parts of Southern France (Foville, cit. 

 Retzius, /. c.) even into our own days, — and in the Tolosan portion of this latter dis- 

 trict has been supposed (see Broca, /. c.) to have been a sui-vival of the practice of the 

 Tectosages, — may make us hesitate before definitely refusing, as so many other writers 

 from the times of Haller {cit. Blumenbach, De Gen. Hum. Var. Nat., /. c.) down to that 

 of Virchow (see Congrfes Internat. d'Anthi-opologie, 1876, torn. i. p. 318) have refused, 

 to accept artificial deformation as the explanation of the conformation of a particular 

 skull, whether it be plagio-cephalic as this skull, or annularly constricted like the 

 well-known Avar skulls of Grafenegg and Atzgersdorff. It must however be said, on 

 the other hand, that both these forms of skull, though now well known to be pro- 

 ducible artificially, do yet arise spontaneously even in our own day ; and it is here 

 suggested that unless a considerable number of skulls of one or other or both of these 

 forms are found together it is unsafe to assert, in the absence of still persistent marks 

 of the action of a compressing or constricting apparatus, that any single skull has been 

 artificially deformed. For in most cases in which we have undoubted evidence of 

 the existence of this practice, skulls of both forms, the plagio-cephalic, in which the 

 skull has been compressed from before backwards, and the annularly constricted and 

 elongated form illustrated by the Avar skulls above-mentioned and described by many 

 of the authors enumerated below, have been found together : and in spite of the 

 tendency shown bj' many writers to make multitudinous di^dsions of artificial cranial 

 deformities, it is plain from a consideration of the history of the rapid growth 

 of the brain and of the restlessness of children in early life, that it must be ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to prevent, with whatever cai-e and whatever apparatus, the 

 plagio-cephalic form from lapsing into the aimularly constricted form. A com- 

 parison of the account given by M. Dumoutier of the practice (Bull. Soc. Ethnograph. 

 de Paris, vol. i. 1847, cit. Gosse, /. c. p. 154), as carried on in Patagonia with 

 the description given by Professor Huxley of a skull brought from Gregory Bay, 

 Patagonia, by Dr. Cunningham of H.M.S. ' Nassau,' or of that given by Ellis, 1. c. 

 infra, of the Tahiti method with that given by Camper, I. c. of a calvarium brought to 

 Oxford by Captain King (No. 827. University Museum), will show that both forms of 

 artificial deformity existed side by side with each other in Patagonia and in Tahiti. 

 Annularly constricted and elongated skulls, such as the one spoken of by Camper as 

 ' tout pareillement conform^e ' to the one from Tahiti, have been constantly found in 

 the region of the Nootka Sound in company with the i)lagio-cephalous variety. And 

 the same is notoriously the case with the Peruvian series, though here it must be said 

 that several authors have attempted to show, though not in the wTiter's opinion 

 successfviUy, that these two forms of distorted skull may be taken as distinctive either 

 of two different races, or of chiefs as opposed to the common people. See Forbes, /. c. 

 infra, pp 12, 13. The annularly constricted skulls which have come into the present 

 writer's hands appear to have belonged to females whose treatment, even in matters 

 of this kind, is often, amongst savages, different from that of males. 



Qq 2 



