. ide occipital regions, and expanded in the direction of the bipa- : 
- yjetal and vertical diameters. He could not give an accurate de- 
scription of the mound, nor state the circums‘ances under which 
the skull was found; but he would endeavor to ascertain the facts : 
with certainty in regard to it. . 
Mr. N. Holmes remarked that it would be a matter of much 
interest to determine the age of the mound. It was well known 
that the practice of artificially flattening the skull had prevailed 
among the Natchez, Choctaws, and other tribes of the Lower 
Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, and among the modern 
Nootka-Columbian Indians. Some of these tribes of the Gulf had 
been known, also, to build small mounds over the graves of their — 
dead, within the historic period. This method of oblique flatten- 
ing, as well as that of flattening and elongating the head in the 
backward direction, by compression in the frontal and parietal re- 
gions, had been practised among the ancient Peruvians. If this 
mound were shown to belong to the age of the Mound-Builders 
{ about. the year J 13, written n by sents —_ 
_ of the Mississippi Valley, or to a still earlier age, and the position 
skull in the mound were well ascertained, it might furnish 
evic ence that the practice of flattening the skull had prevailed to a 
: me this CE ape ata date long anterior to all his- ; 
ted from Edward Holden, Eq... pale 
i 
