DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 418 



Such examples of markedly unsymmetrical skulls, thus recovered 

 under circumstances which preclude the idea of their irregular con- 

 formation being traceable to posthumous sources of change, have an 

 important bearing on the general question of typical and abnormal 

 cranial forms. Mr. J. Barnard Davis appears indeed to have enter- 

 tertained an opposite view. In describing the Juniper Green skull 

 he remarks : " There is a depression from about the posterior third 

 of the sagittal suture to the tip of the occipital bone ; and a want of 

 symmetry in the posterior superior region of the parietals, that on 

 the right side being less prominent than that on the left, —not im- 

 probably a posthumous deformation.^''* So also in his description of 

 the Lesmurdie skull. After defining its peculiar platycephalic form 

 with unusual lateral development in the post-parietal region, Mr. 

 Davis adds : " There is also a want of symmetry in the two sides of 

 this post-parietal swelling. The right side is not equally tumid with 

 the left. Not improbably this irregularity of form, in which this 

 skull agrees closely with that from the Juniper Green cist, may arise 

 from posthumous distortion." -^ In those remarks the learned crani- 

 ologist may be presumed to have overlooked circumstances strongly 

 impressed on my own mind, from witnessing the exhumation of 

 the Juniper Green skull, and observing its unsymmetrical conforma- 

 tion and flattened occiput on lifting it from the cist, where it had 

 lain for centuries, uusubjected to the slightest pressure. To 

 whatever cause such irregularity or distortion may be ascribed, 

 its origin must be traced in such examples to some action operating 

 during life. Of the occurrence of posthumous cranial distortion 

 there can be no question. In the remarkable example of an abnor- 

 mal skull in Dr. Thurnam's collection, recovered from the Anglo- 

 Saxon cemetery at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, there are indications, 

 especially in the gaping sutures on the base, that it has been sub- 

 jected to an extraordinary amount of oblique compression, producing 

 changes wholly incompatible with the exercise of important vital 

 functions, J The same is no less obvious in the skull recovered from 

 an Indian grave on the site of the ancient Hochelaga, at Montreal, 

 and described by me in a previous number of this Journal. § The 

 posthumous origin of the distortion is placed beyond doubt in both 



• Crania Britannica, Dec. II. 15. (3) 



t Ibid, Dec. II. 16. (5) 



t Archceol. Journal, viii. p. 96. Cran. Brit, Dec. I. p. 38. 



§ Canadian Journal, Vol. VI., p. 414. 



