82 SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY NOTES. 
this was written under the belief that those already published by me had 
been deliberately ignored, it is characterized by a controversial tone which I 
should not otherwise have assumed. Immediately on reading Dr. Davis’s cour- 
teous reply in the Atheneum of Sept. 27th, in which he states that the omission 
of any reference to my prior publication ‘was an oversight resulting from lapse 
of memory alone,’ I wrote to him expressing my regret at the occurrence of 
guch a correspondence, owing to our severance by the Atlantic preventing my 
receiving his explanation till months after the appearance of his paper. As I 
now find that Dr. Davis is much more sensitive on the personal aspects of the 
correspondence than on the question of priority of origination of the opinions 
there discussed, I shall feel gratified by your affording me an opportunity for 
expressing with equal publicity my undiminished esteem for him, and my regret 
that any controversial element should have mingled with our interchange of 
opinions, I willingly reciprocate the friendly feeling he expresses, and gladly 
retract whatever in the tone or terms of my former letter can be otherwise than 
agreeable to him. Such mutual good feeling need not ixterfere with the utmost 
freedom in the expression of diversity of opinions; and as to my communication 
to the Canadian Journal (Sept. 1862), I have pleasure in being able to place its 
columns at his disposal, and invite his reply to what I have published there, 
where it will be seen by all the readers of my paper. 
“Tam, &., 
DaniEL WILSon. 
“ p.S, I forward this letter by the hands of Dr. J. Barnard Davis.” 
No. 4. Vo the Editor of the Canadian Journal. 
Shelton, Staffordshire, Dec. 20, 1862. 
Sir,—The following correspondence has a very intimate connection with the- 
memoir entitled “ Ethnical Forms and Undesigued Artificial Distortions of the: 
Human Cranium,” by Prof. Daniel Wilson, LL.D., which appeared in your excel- 
lent Journal, No. XLI., September, 1862, p. 399, and I shall esteem it an act of 
politeness if you will allow it to appear in the pages of The Canadian Journal. 
Dr. D. Wilson has very handsomely invited me to reply to his long article, 
in which he thought proper to comment so freely upon my views, &c., before 
seeing what I had to say to his communication in The Atheneum of September 20 ; 
but I feel that in any attempt to reply, however intended, there could scarcely 
be avoided some appearance of that personal reflection which I sincerely depre- 
cate and lament, or what might be assumed to be such an appearance. I shall 
therefore confine myself to two or three remarks, principally referring to facts, 
which, with the concurrence of Dr. Wilson, through whom this communication 
is transmitted, may be more correctly stated in your pages. 
1. Dr. Wilson very properly, at pages 412 and 413, of his memoir, corrects. 
the error into which I had fallen in referring the flattening of the occipital 
region, in the Juniper Green Cranium, to posthwmous influences. Being interred’ 
in a cisé, and not exposed to posthumous pressure, such could not be the cause.. 
But he overlooks my own correction of this error, made long before, in different 
pages of the ‘‘Crania Britannica”—Description of Newbigging Skull, pl. 21,. 
