424 EXAMPLES OF CRANIAL MODIFICATIONS, ETC. 
having reference to deformed crania.” At the same time Mr. Davis 
accumulates additional evidence in confirmation of the opinions that 
the artificial distortion of the human head is by no means limited 
to the savage tribes of the. New World; and discusses not only its 
practice among the ancient Macrocephali, including the received 
theory of Hippocrates that such artificial forms may be at length per- 
petuated by natural generation ; but also “‘the extraordinary fact that 
the practice of distorting the skull in infancy is not yet extinct even 
in Europe.” To this curious inquiry the attention of some of the 
distinguished Physiologists and Anatomists of France has been directed, 
and the result of the combined observations of MM. Foville and 
Gosse, along with those of M. Lunier, is to satisfy them that in 
different Departments of France, the practice of applying constricting 
coverings and bandages to the heads of infants still prevails ; and that 
certain diversities of cranial configuration in some of the Provinces, 
and especially in Normandy, Gascony, Limousin and Brittany, are 
traceable to prevalent modes of infantile head-dress. It detracts 
considerably from the force of such conclusions, that the most re- 
markable examples produced by Dr. Foville, are derived from inmates 
of lunatic asylums; whereas the result of numerous independent 
observations on the Flathead tribes of the Pacific tends to prove that 
whatever may be the increase of mortality in infancy, produced by the 
barbarous practice of cranial deformation, the adults exhibit no mental 
inferiority to other Indians. On the contrary they are objects of dread 
to the neighbouring tribes among whom no such practice prevails, 
enslaving them, and retaining them in degrading servitude, while they 
rigorously exclude their slaves from the privilege of distorting the 
heads of their offspring ; so that the normal head is with them the 
badge of servile inferiority. Mr. Davis has figured a distorted skull 
of an aged French woman in his collection, believed to have been the 
inmate of a lunatic asylum in one of the Southern Departments of 
France. It is produced in illustration of the most usual variety of 
deformation, denominated by MM. Foville and Gosse the ¢éte annulaire : 
but though of somewhat brachycephalic proportions, there is nothing in 
the profile view, which is the only one given, calculated to suggest the 
idea of abnormal configuration. 
From the various aspects which this craniological department of 
physical ethnology thus discloses to the inquirer, it becomes obvious 
that it is a greatly less simple element of classification than was as- 
