406 



ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARl 



preserving the implementa and personal ornaments originally depos- 

 ited beside them, — had for the most part transferred to the Phreno- 

 logical Museum the few earlier crania recovered from Scottish 

 barrows. To these phrenological zeal had made some additions ; and 

 my own researches enabled me to increase the number. But after 

 setting forth the measurements and most noticeable characteristics of 

 thirty-nine skulls, including some from medieval cemeteries, I was 

 careful to express the conviction that such limited data could, at 

 most, only suffice for the basis of suggestive hypotheses. 



The facilities derived from repeated study of the remarkable collec- 

 tion of Crania of the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia, as 

 well as those in other American museums, have since familiarized 

 me with the varied forms of which the human head is susceptible, 

 under the influence of artificial compression ; and while the examin- 

 ation and measurement of some hundred specimens of American 

 crania have satisfied me of the existence of dolichocephalic and 

 brachycephalic heads as tribal or national characteristics of the New 

 World ; I have also been no less struck with the exaggerated brachy- 

 cephalic form, accompanied with the parieto-occipital flattening, or 

 the vertical occiput, the efiects, as it appears to me, of undesigned 

 artificial deformation, resulting from the process of nursing still 

 practised among certain Indian tribes. Of this peculiar brachy- 

 cephalic form the Barrie skull, figured on plate I., is a highly 

 characteristic illustration. Found in an Indian cemetery, on a conti- 

 nent where the craniologist is familiar with examples of the human 

 head flattened and contorted into the extremest abnormal shapes ; 

 and where the influence of the Indian cradle-board iu producing or 

 increasing the flattened occiput had long since been pointed out by 

 Dr. Morton : the peculiar contour of the Barrie skull excited no 

 more notice than pertained to the recognition of one well-known 

 variety of American cranial forms. But when almost precisely 

 the same form is found in British graves, it is suggestive of ancient 

 customs hitherto undreamt of, on which the familiar source of corres- 

 ponding American examples is calculated to throw a novel light. 



About the year 1852, some labourers engaged in levelling a sepul- 

 chral mound in the Parish of Codford, South Wiltshire, — the scene 

 of Sir E. C. Hoare's valuable explorations, — recovered from it a skull 

 which has been preserved by Mr. J. T. Ackerman, and described in 

 the " Crania Britannica" This is the skull represented on plate 



