144 REVIEWS — CRANIA BRITANNICA. 



Davis, on whom we believe the entire risk and cost of the work 

 devolves, it will be a source of considerable additional expenditure, 

 as he finds himself necessitated, in his enthusiastic development of 

 the subject, to be more copious in the text, and more profuse in the 

 illustrations, than was at first contemplated, or than economic con- 

 siderations will very well justify. 



Meanwhile we extract, from the present Decade, some incidental 

 remarks on the artificial modifications of cranial development, both 

 in American, and in the primitive British races, suggested — in part 

 at least, — by a paper previously published in this Journal. 



" Among the American races in general," says Mr. Davis, " there 

 is so marked a flatness in the occipital region, that Professor Morton 

 was induced to regard it as one of the few typical characters of the 

 skull belonging to the American nations, and spreading from one 

 end of the continent to the other. This position, which is no doubt 

 founded in truth, must be allowed to be liable to numerous excep- 

 tions. Yet the crania of Americans figured by Saudifort {Cranium 

 Americani Septentrionalis,) and by Milne Edwards, the latter given. 

 as a typical skull (^Cuvier's Regne Animal, Race Americaine,) are 

 both distingmshed by a considerable occipital projection. Professor 

 Daniel Wilson of Toronto, in an able paper (Canadian Journal, vol. 

 ii., p. 406), has expressed a reasonable doubt whether this occipital 

 flatness, or great vertical diameter, be properly a universal character 

 of the American races, and has supported his argument by observa- 

 tions made upon crania disinterred in Canada, and considered to 

 have belonged to the Iriquois and Hurons. He has also given 

 expression to a query, which the examination of skulls remarkable 

 for vertical diameter and flatness of occiput naturally induces, 

 whether the American races may not owe these cranial characters, 

 in some measure at least, to artificial distortion. That nature has 

 accorded to many of them a brachycephalic skull, and also that this 

 feature is so marked as to be regarded as a typical character among 

 the western races may be admitted. Still art has been frequently, 

 almost generally, called in to heighten this conformation, in a smaller 

 or greater degree. And it is by no means improbable that its influ- 

 ence may be perceived among the aboriginal crania of the British 

 Isles, especially in this greater or less occipital flatness, which is 

 frequently unsymmetrical." 



In Mr. Davis's latter remark on aboriginal British crania, he adopts 



