410 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICIAL 



mous compression could affect the form of the skull. The latter is 

 represented in profile, in the Crania Britannica (Dec. II. pi. 15.) 

 The sutures are partially effaced by ossification, and other character- 

 istics mark it as that of a man probably upwards of fifty years of 

 age. The teeth also present the familiar characteristic of this ancient 

 class of crania, being worn completely flat, both in the upper and 

 lower jaw, like those of a ruminating animal ; indicating the nature 

 of the food as hard grains, nuts, or other substances requiring la- 

 borious mastication, different from the mere animal food of a purely 

 hunter state of savage life ; though the same phenomenon is wit- 

 nessed in a more marked degree among the Walla-walla Indians 

 of the Columbia River. They occupy a barren waste, frequently 

 exposed to drifting sand, and subsist almost entirely on salmon 

 dried in the sun. During the process of desiccation the salmon 

 becomes so impregnated with sand, that it is rare to meet with a 

 Walla-walla much beyond maturity whose teeth are not worn 

 down to the gums by the attrition of his gritty food. Again, among 

 the Peruvians, a similar result is produced, though to a less extent, 

 from their habit of chewing the leaf of the coca mixed with llute, a 

 compound made of the wild potatoe, with calcined shells and ashes 

 of alkaline plants. 



The Juniper Green Skull, as shown in the full-sized view in the 

 Crania Britannica, presents in profile, as well as partially in the 

 vertical view, that square and compact form peculiarly characteristic 

 of the brachy cephalic crania of British barrows. But it also dis- 

 closes, in its flattened occiput, a feature which had escaped my notice 

 in any previous example of primitive Scottish crania ; and along with 

 this an unusual parietal breadth increasing towards the occiput, in a 

 manner which I subsequently learned to recognise as an accompani- 

 ment of the post-parietal flattening. Only those who have themselves 

 engaged in such researches can fully appreciate the vividness of im- 

 pressions produced by whatever is characteristic or peculiar in the 

 skull or other relics, handled for the first time as the evidence of 

 the race or age of the freshly opened barrow or cairn, compared with 

 the examination of the same from the shelves of a cabinet. The 

 Juniper Green skull was carried home in my hand, a distance of 

 some miles, and its flattened vertical occiput specially attracted at- 

 tention, and gave rise to conversation on the way, with my friend 

 Mr. Eiobert Chambers, who had accompanied me on this excursion. 



