CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. 141 
hand a distance of several miles, and its truncated outline, and still 
more, its flattened occiput attracted special attention, and gave rise to 
conversation with my friend Mr. Robert Chambers, who had accom- 
panied mé on this exploratory excursion. With the temptation of a 
novel discovery, I was at first disposed to recognise the traces of art in 
this abbreviated form, not only as exaggerating the natural character- 
istics, but as'a possible source of their production. But a comparison 
with examples of the true dolichocephalic skull, to which I had already 
assigned priority in point of time, sufficed to dispel that illusion) 
and to satisfy me—of what the examination of the corresponding 
classes of Peruvian crania has still more strongly confirmed,—that no 
artificial modification can entirely efface the distinctions between two 
such diverse forms. At a subsequent meeting of the Society of Anti- 
quaries of Scotland, I accompanied the presentation of the cranium 
and urn with an account of the circumstances of their discovery, and 
some remarks on the novel features noticeable in the skull. Unfor- 
tunately the printing of the Society’s Proceedings, which had beer 
suspended for some time, was not resumed till the following season ; 
and no record of this communication was preserved beyond the title. 
Another skull m the same collection, found under somewhat similar 
circumstances in a cist at Lesmurdie, Banffshire, has the vertical oc« 
ciput accompanied by an unusual parietal expansion and want of height, 
suggestive of the idea of a combined coronal and occipital compres- 
sion.* A third Scottish skull, procured from one of a group of cists near 
Kinaldie, Aberdeenshire, also exhibits the posterior vertical flattening. 
But a more striking example than"any of those appears in the one 
from Codford, South Wiltshire, selected above to illustrate this type.f 
Dr. Davis remarks in his description of it :—‘‘The zygomatic arches 
are short, a character which appertains to the entire calvarium, but 
is most concentrated in the parietals, to which the abruptly ascending 
portion of the occipital lends its influence. The widest part of the 
calvarium is about an inch behind, and as much above the auditory 
foramen, and when we view it in front we perceive it gradually to ex- 
pand from the outer angular process of the frontal to the point now 
indicated.” The entire parieto-occipital region presents in profile an 
abrupt vertical line; but when viewed vertically it tapers considerably 
- more towards the occiput than is usual in crania of the same class. 
The cause of the vertical occiput, as well as the oblique parieto-oc- 
* Crania Britannica, Dee. ii. pl. 16. 
t Ibid, Dec. ii. pl. 14. 
