490 REVIEWS DEFORMED FRAGMENTARY SKULL. 



batfcie-field at Tork, England, where the ancient British Celts, 

 had been vanquished by the E-omans. 



Bucouraged by such examples of success. Dr. Meigs proceeded to 

 apply the tests which his experience in comparative craniology placed 

 at his command. The skull, however, is peculiar, and so far as his 

 experience could guide him, unique. Among all the 1045 crania in 

 the collection of the Academy, none presented a counterpart to it. 

 Its most remarkable feature is that the occipital bone rises vertically 

 from the posterior margin of the great foramen to meet the parieta- 

 iia, which bend abruptly downward between their lateral protuber- 

 ances. This striking peculiarity, therefore, gives to a skull brought 

 from an ancient quarry-cave at Jerusalem some of the most typical 

 characteristics of Peruvian Crania. After minutely describing the 

 appearance which the several bones present. Dr. Meigs expresses his 

 conviction that the head has been artificially deformed by pressure 

 applied to the occipital region during youth ; thus supplying an 

 interesting illustration of the practice in the old world of the same 

 custom of distorting the human head, which was long regarded as 

 peculiar to the American aborigines. 



After marshalling ail the probable ethnic claimants for this remark- 

 able cranium, and assigning reasons for rejecting each ; Dr. Meigs 

 shows that it unites some of the most characteristic elements of the 

 Mongolian and the Sclavonian head, while differing in some respects 

 from both ; and he finally concludes that it may be refered — not as 

 a positive and indisputable conclusion, but as an approximation to 

 the truth, — to the people and the region about Lake Baikal. Through 

 the Sclaves and Burats of that region the short-headed races of East- 

 ern Europe graduate apparently into the Kalmucks and Mongols 

 proper of Asia ; and here probably is a remarkable example of an 

 artificially modified cranium of that transitional people of Lake 

 Baikal. 



The whole paper is an interesting one to those engaged in similar 



studies, and is marked throughout by the candour and temperate 



caution so specially needed in the present state of ethnological 



investigation. 



D. W 



