CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. 153 
‘by avery simple experiment. If the observer lie down on the floor, 
‘without a pillow, and then ascertain what part of the back of the 
head touches the ground, he will find that it is the portion of the 
occiput immediately above the lambdoidal suture, and not the occipi- 
tal bone. When the Indian mother places a sufficiently high pillow 
for her infant, the tendency of the constant pressure will be to 
‘produce the vertical occiput ; but where, as is more frequently the case, 
the board has a mere cover of moss or soft leather, then the result 
‘will be just such an oblique parietal flattenning, as is shown on ‘a 
British skull from the remarkable tumulus near Littleton Drews 
Wiltshire. Crania Britannica, Decade III. plate 24. 
But there are other sources of modification of the human skull in 
infancy, even more common than the cradle-board. More than one 
of the predominant head-forms in Normandy and Belgium are now 
traced to artificial changes; and by many apparently trifling and un- 
heeded causes, consequent on national customs, nursing usages, or 
the caprices of dress and fashion, the form of the head may be modi- 
‘fied in the nursery. The constant laying of the infant to rest on its 
side, the pressure in the same direction in nursing it, along with the 
fashion of cap, hat, or wrappage, may all influence the shape of head 
among civilized nations, and in certain cases tend as much to exageer- 
‘ate the naturally dolichocephalic skull, as the Indian cradle-beard 
“increases the short diameter of the opposite type. Such artificial cra- 
‘nial forms as that designated by M. Foville, the Téte annulaire, may 
have predominated for many centuries throughout certain rural dis- 
tricts of France, solely from the unreasoning conformity with which 
the rustic nurse adhered to the traditional or prescriptive bandages 
to which he ascribes that distortion. ‘All experience shows that 
such usages are among ‘the least eradicable, and long survive the 
shock of revolutions that change dynasties and efface more important 
national characteristics. 
But now that attention has been directed to the subject of unde- 
signed changes thus effected on the human head, its full bearings be- 
‘gin to be Appeceineed: ; and there is even, perhaps, a danger that more 
may be ascribed to them than is legitimate. Such was undoubtedly 
the effect on Dr. Morton’s mind from his familiarity with the results of 
artificial deformation on American crania; and were we to follow his ex- 
ample, we should be tempted to designate all the extreme varieties of the 
elongated dolichocephalic, acrocephalic, and brachycephalic skulls 
of British barrows, as mere modifications of the same ethnical form. 
