OF PECULIAR CRANIAL FORMS. 419 
accordingly assumed a prominent place among the phenomena spe- 
cially distinctive of American ethnology. But, on this very account, 
such artificial cranial distortion, especially among ancient and modern 
American tribes, now receives so much attention from the craniologist, 
that we are apt not only to forget how entirely this barbarous practice 
had been lost sight of until the recent revival of the subject, as one 
necessarily involved in determining the true significance of generic 
forms of the human head in the deductions of physical ethnology ; 
but also to ignore all other causes tending to produce corresponding 
results. 
The possibility of artificial modifications of the form of the human 
skull, after having been denied by Sabatier, Camper, and Artaud, was 
reasserted in strong terms by Blumenbach, when describing a flattened 
Charib skull brought from the island of St. Vincents. Nevertheless 
opinions oscillated with varying uncertainty on this disputed question ; 
and even after the publication of Dr. Morton’s Crania Americana had 
furnished a complete history of the practice, and abundant illustrations 
of its results, the artificial origin of such cranial malformation was 
still denied by eminent anatomists and physiologists. The celebrated 
anatomist, Tiedmann, after careful inspection of the distorted skulls 
brought by Mr. Pentland from the ancient sepulchres of Titicaca in 
Peru, still maintained that their singular forms were entirely due to 
natural causes; and this idea appeared to receive remarkable confirma- 
tion from opinions published by Dr. Tschudi, after personal examination 
of numerous skulls and:‘mummies exhumed during his travels in Peru. 
Without denying that some of the peculiarities of cranial conforma- 
tion frequently observed in skulls found in ancient Peruvian graves are 
the result of artificial deformation, purposely superinduced by band- 
aging and mechanical pressure during infancy: Dr. Tschudi maintains 
that diverse natural forms of skull pertain to different ancient races 
of Peru, and especially that one peculiar and extremely elongated form 
of head is a natural Peruvian characteristic. In confirmation of this 
he not only refers to mummies of children of less than a year old, 
belonging to the tribe of Aymaraes, exhibiting the dolichocephalic pro- 
portions observed in adult skulls : but the very same specialities which 
he had noted in adult crania of the Huancas came under his observa- 
tion in more than one mummied feetus, which could not have been sub- 
jected to any artificial apparatus for the purpose of modifying the 
eranial configuration. in proof of this, he makes special reference to 
