DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 411 



With the temptation of a novel discovery, I was at first disposed to 

 recognise the traces of art in this abbreviated form of skull, not only 

 as exaggerating the natural characteristics, but as a possible source of 

 their production. But a comparison with examples of the true 

 dolichocephalic form, to which I had already assigned priority in 

 point of time, sufiiced to dispel that illusion. At a subsequent 

 meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, I accompanied 

 the presentation of the cranium and urn with an account of the 

 circumstances of their discovery, and some remarks on the novel 

 features noticeable in the skull. Unfortunately the printing of 

 the Society's proceedings, which had been suspended for some 

 time, was not resumed till the following season ; and no record of 

 this communication was preserved, beyond the title. 



The same remarkable parieto-occipital flattening is apparent in 

 another Scottish cranium found, under somewhat similar circum- 

 stances, in a cist at Lesmurdie, Banffshire, also engraved in the 

 Crania Britannica (Dec. III. 16) ; and still more so in the one al- 

 ready described, and figured on Plate II., recovered from a "Wiltshire 

 barrow. But I was more interested in detecting some slight 

 traces of this artificial parieto-occipital flattening, in a remarkable 

 skull found at Grangemouth, on the Forth, in 1843, at a depth of 

 twenty feet, in a bed of shell and marl. This interesting relic has 

 been engraved on a small scale for a work now in the press ;* and, 

 as there shown, is an imperfect calvarium, the basilar and temporal, 

 as well as the facial bones, being absent. But sufiicient remains to 

 illustrate its characteristic form, and to show that in its general 

 character it approximates to the brachycephalic crania of British tu- 

 muli. It is as symmetrical as the majority of modern heads. A 

 slight depression occurs at the coronal suture ; the parietal protu- 

 berances are prominent, and the superciliary ridges are well deve- 

 loped. The following measurements of this skull will show that it is 

 of large size, though with a small relative vertical diameter : 



Longitudinal diameter 7.43 



Parietal diameter 5.65 



Prontal diameter,. 4.47 



Vertical diameter 4.75 



Occipito-frontal arch 15.25 



Do. from occ. front, protuberance to root of nose 13.25 

 Horizontal circumference 21.13 



* Prehistoric 3Ian : Researches into the OHgin of Civilisation in the Old and the New 

 World. Macmillan & Co. 



