152 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 
tribes of the Pacific coast were brought under the notice of Euro-- 
peans, it is obvious that if such superinduced deformity developed any 
general tendency to cerebral disease, or materially affected the intel-- 
Tect, the result would be apparent in the degeneracy or extirpation of | 
‘the Flathead tribes. But so far is this from being the case, that they 
are described by traders and voyagers, as acute and intelligent. They 
‘are, moreover, an object of dread to neighbouring tribes who retain 
the normal form of head ; and they look on Sin with contempt as 
thus bearing the hereditary badge of slaves. 
The child born to such strange honours is laid, soon after its birth, 
upon the cradle-board, an oblong piece of wood, somtimes slightly hol- 
Jowed, and with a cross board projecting beyond the head to protect it 
from injury. A small pad of leather stuffed with moss or frayed. 
‘cedar-bark is placed on the forehead and tightly fastened on either: 
side to the board ; and this is rarely loosed until its final removal be- 
fore the end of the first year. The skull has then received a form 
which is only slightly modified during the subsequent growth of the: 
brain. But the very same kind of cradle is in use among all 
the Indian tribes. It is indeed varied as to its ornamental ad-- 
juncts, and non-essential details; but practically it resolves itself, 
‘in every case, into a straight board to which the infant is bound; and 
‘as it is retained in a recumbent position, and thus the pressure of 
jts own weight during the period when, as has been shown, the occi- 
‘pital and parietal ‘bones are peculiarly soft:and compressible, is made. 
to act constantly in one direction. This, I assume to have been fle 
eause of the vertical or otherwise flattened occiput in the ancient British 
brachycephalic crania. The Same cause must tend to increase the: 
‘characteristic shortness in the longitudinal diameter, to produce the 
‘premature ossification of certain sutures, and to shorten the zygoma, 
with probably also some tendency to make the arch bulge out in its. 
effort at subsequent full growth, and so to widen the face. 
Dr. J. Barnard Davis has applied the term “ parieto-occipital flat- 
ness,’ where the results of artificial compression in certain British 
skulls extend over the parietals with the upper portion of the occipi- 
tal; and he appears to regard this as something essentially distinct from: 
the vertical occiput.* But it is a form of common occurrence in: 
Tndian skulls, and is in reality the most inartificial of all the results of 
the undesigned pressure of the cradle-board. This will be understood 
© Nat. Hist. Review, July, 1s62. Atheneum, Sept. 27th, 1862, p. 402. 
