80 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
The quotation given by Dr. Wilson from my description of the Caedegai skull 
in the ‘ Crania Britannica, to show that I was cognizant of his previous “ hint,” 
must surely prove more than this. For although it was only a “hint” or “idea,” 
as Dr. Wilson justly describes it, yet the quotation itself shows that I recognized 
him as the enunciator of it. It may be that the reference of the idea to him wag 
not so explicit as it might have been; but it was just the kind of general refer- 
ence that most writers would have made in the case of a surmise. If, in truth, 
it were in Dr. Wilson’s mind more than an idea, and he was convinced ever 
since the discovery of the Juniper Green skull in 1851 that the appearance in 
question was artificial, I had no means of being aware of this, and no knowledge 
of it whatever, as he had not anywhere published such a “settled conviction.” 
Dr. Wilson is correct in his supposition that his ‘friendly review notice of 
Decade III. of the ‘ Crania Britannica’” in the Canadian Journal of March, 
1859, had escaped my notice. I was not aware of its existence ; and if it contain 
a further extension of Dr. Wilson’s idea, that 1 am at present wholly ignorant 
of. Possibly, when Dr. Wilson knows this, it may go far to excuse the omission 
he complains of. Allowing the greatest weight and importance to Dr. Wilson’s 
previous hints, I believe the theory of the artificial flattening of the occiput is 
not received, which it certainly might have been, if we were to suppose the date 
of 1851 as the period of Dr. Wilson’s conviction, and that of 1857 as the 
distinct enunciation of this theory. The fact that it was announced as an idea 
only, accounts for the small attention it has received, not merely from myself, 
but from others also. Having experienced much of Dr. Wilson’s friendly aid and 
encouragement in the ‘ Crania Britannica,’—in truth, it was he who suggested 
the title of the book itself,—I hope I shall not be misunderstood when I say, 
that nothing could be farther from my intention than to do him an injustice. 
Secondly, as to my own claims in referring these occipital flattenings to what 
I believe, with Dr. Wilson, is their true cause. On learning Dr. Wilson’s “idea” 
in 1857 or 1858, I was not at all satisfied. Within a year, I had an opportunity 
of examining about fifty ancient British skulls in the Bateman Museum for other 
purposes. I took this occasion to inquire into a peculiarity I had observed 
before—viz., a flat surface, extending over the posterior parts of the parietals 
and the upper portion of the occipital—the ‘‘ parieto-occipital flatness” so often 
alluded to in the ‘ Crania Britannica? I made notes of all the skulls in which 
this flatness prevailed, and observed that it occurred in children as well as adults, 
and that sometimes it was accompanied with a posthumous flattening, with 
which, however, it did not coincide, but was distinct. Thus it was by taking 
the parieto-occipital flatness as the basis of my operations—a view wholly new 
to Dr. Wilson, I believe—that I was led to deduce what I consider to be the 
true rationale of all these deformations. The next step was the receiving a 
North American Indian skull, with unsymmetrical parieto-occipital flattening, 
and the inference that the deformation was, in both cases, owing to the same 
cause—i. e nursing on the cradle-board. Then came the difficulty of comprising 
the parieto-occipital and the ordinarily flattened occiput of Dr, Wilson in the 
same category, which seems to me to be explained by the shelf on the cradle- 
board being placed at different angles by different mothers. 
