400 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICTAL 



of leading races of men ; and even influenced Prictard in his defi- 

 nition of the symmetrical or oval form of skull which he ascribed to 

 his first division. Against the ideal canons of an antique statuary- 

 scale, however, some of the greatest modern masters protested ; fore- 

 most of whom was Leonardo da Vinci, of whom Bossi remarks : 

 " He thought but little of any general measure of the species. The 

 true proportion admitted by him, and acknowledged to be of difficult 

 investigation, is solely the proportion of an individual in regard to 

 himself, which, according to true imitation, should be difi'erent in all 

 the individuals of a species, as is the ease in nature." In the fea- 

 tures of the face there are the endless varieties of portraiture, con- 

 trolled by family and national affinities, and so also in the varying 

 proportions of the skull there appears to be an approximation in each 

 race towards a special form. The craniologist accordingly finds in 

 nature his short and truncated ; his long and tapering, or " boat- 

 shaped ;" his high or pyramidal ; his broad, flattened, and oval : as 

 well as intermediate forms. But besides those, to each of which a 

 distinctive name has been assigned, attention is being anew directed 

 to a totally distinct class, in which not only the absence of symmetry 

 is suggestive of abnormal structure ; but wherein certain special 

 forms are recognised as the result of artificial causes, operating acci- 

 dentally or by design. Some of these artificial forms have an addi- 

 tional significance from the fact that they are peculiar to man, and 

 originate in causes which distinguish him from all inferior orders of 

 animated nature. This is specially the case with one of the classes 

 of artificial conformation, already traced, in a former number of this 

 Journal, to influences resulting from the mode of nurture in infancy. 

 As the same opinion has been recently reproduced in an English 

 scientific journal as a novel discovery,* a recapitulation of the 

 original idea, with additional illustrations, may not be out of place 

 here. 



In the month of March, 1855, an Indian cemetery was accidentally 

 opened at Barrie, on Lake Simcoe, from which upwards of two hun- 

 dred skulls are said to have been exhumed, along with bones and 

 Indian relics. Among the Crania preserved in the collection of the 

 Canadian Institute is one of those Indian skulls, selected, no doubt,, 

 owing to its unusual form, which could scarcely fail to attract atten- 



* Nat. Hist. Review, July, 1862. J. B. Davis, M.R.C.S. Eng., &c., On Distortions in the 

 Crania of the Ancient Britons. 



