OF PECULIAR CRANIAL FORMS. 423 
the form of the skull is ever in any materia! Cegree affected, unless 
pressure is applied in very early life. 
The third cause of artificial configuration is now universally recog- 
nised, though it is possible that in referring to the mummy of the Opas 
child preserved in the national collection at Lima, Dr. Tschudi ignores 
results produced even by this familiar source of cranial deformation ; 
for the unsymmetrical form of the head figured by him is strongly sug- 
gestive of mechanical pressure, whether designedly or undesignedly ap- 
plied during life, or arising solely from the rude processes of mummifi- 
cation. But where the more general custom of inhumation prevails 
another source of undesigned and posthumous compression comes into 
play, some results of which find striking illustration in the Indian 
skulls described above. To this neglected element of error in the 
ethnic value of cranial forms, attention was first directed by Dr. Thurn- 
ham, in describing the skull of a man about sixty years of age, found, 
in 1850, at the Village of Stone, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 
along with an iron spear-head and knife, the umbo of a shield, and other 
relics clearly recognisable as of the common forms and characters per- 
taining to Anglo-Saxon pagan sepulture. This skull attracted attention 
from features of an unusual and striking character. It is marked by 
distortion not only involving the most unsymmetrical deformity,—the 
whole right side of the skull having been thrust forward, and the left 
side proportionally thrown back, with great lateral protrusion of the 
right temporal and parietal bones,—but the articulating surface of the 
tight temporal bone has been forced so much in advance of the left 
side as to render it no longer possible to replace the lower jaw, which 
retains its normal form. The remarkable distortion which this skull 
has undergone without the displacement or fracture of the bones of 
the calvarium, led at first to considerable difference of opinion as to 
the causes to which such singular malformation ought to be ascribed. 
But the impossibility of the essential vital functions of the jaws having 
been performed if the temporal bones had existed during life in the 
same unconformable relation to the lower jaw, left no room to doubt 
that the distortion had been produced subsequent to inhumation. 
Mr. J. B. Davis has accordingly devoted special consideration to the 
general subject of ‘‘ posthumous distortion,’ when treating, in the 
“Crania Britannica’ of various sources of abnormal cranial conforma- 
tion; and refers to it as ‘‘another and distinct mode which will in 
future be required to be taken into consideration in all investigations 
