CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. 143 
the Greek head possessed by Dr. Morton, was a cast presented to him 
by Dr. Retzius, and which, from its selection by the distinguished 
Swedish craniologist for such a purpose, might reasonably be assumed 
to illustrate the Greek type. it is accordingly described by Dr. J. 
Aitken Meigs, in his “ Cranial characteristics of the Race of Man,”’ as 
very much resembling that of Constantine Demetriades, a Greek native 
of Corfu, and long a teacher of the modern Greek language at Oxford, 
as engraved in Dr. Prichard’s Researches. Its cranial characteristics 
are thus defined in the Catalogue of the Mortonian Collec- 
tion: (No. 1354,) ‘The calvarial region is well developed, the 
frontal line expansive and prominent, the facial line departs but slight- 
ly from the perpendicular.” On recently visiting Philadelphia for the 
purpose of renewed examination of its valuable collections, I was sur- 
prised to find this head,—instead of being either oval or as Blumen- 
back describes the example selected by him, sub-globular,—presenting 
the truncated form, with extreme breadth at the parietal protuberan- 
ces, and then abruptly passing to a flattened occiput. It measures 6.5 
longitudinal diameter; 5.7 parietal diameter; and 19.2 horizontal 
circumference. But the most noticeable feature is the great inequality 
of the two sides, the right side is less tumid than the left, while it pro- 
jects more to the rear, and the whole is fully as unsymmetrical as many 
American crania. Were it not that this feature appears to have wholly 
escaped Dr. Morton’s attention, as he merely enters it in his catalogue 
as a “Cast of the skull of a young Greek, Prof. Retzius ;”” I should be 
tempted to suppose it had been purposely sent to him to illustrate the 
phenomena of unsymmetrical development; and of the influence of 
undesigned artificial causes on skull-forms. 
Dr. Morton was not unobservant of such indications of the frequent 
dissimilarity between opposite sides of the skull, nor did he entertain 
any doubt as to its cause when occurring as the accompaniment 
of other artificial changes, though he entirely overlooked its more 
general prevalence. When first noticing the probable origin of the 
flattened occiput of certain British skulls, I drew attention to the 
fact that he had already recognised undesigned artificial compres- 
sion as one source of abnormal cranial conformation, and he accom- 
panied its demonstration with a reference to the predominant unsym- 
metrical form in all such skulls. “This irregularity,”’ he added, 
**chiefly consists in the greater projection of the occiput to one side 
than the other,” and “is not to be attributed to the intentional appli- 
cation of mechanical force.’? Such want of uniformity in the two 
