414 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICIAL 



examples, by the lower jaws having remained unaffected by the pres- 

 sure that wrought so great a change on the calvaria, thereby supply- 

 ing an accurate gauge of the amount of distortion, on replacing the 

 condyles in apposition with the glenoid cavities. In the same paper, 

 on "Some modifying elements affecting the ethnic significance of 

 peculiar forms of the human skull," attention is also drawn to the 

 exaggeration of the dolichocephalic type of head, in an Indian skull 

 from an ancient cemetery on the Greorgian Bay, now preserved in the 

 Museum of the University of Toronto. 



But the sources of unsymmetrical cranial deformation must be 

 traced to other causes besides those of artificial appliances purposely 

 employed in infancy, and of posthumous compression changing the form 

 after death. The normal human head may be assumed to present a 

 perfect correspondence in its two hemispheres ; but very slight in- 

 vestigation will suf&ce to convince the observerthat few living examples 

 satisfy the requirements of such a theoretical standard. Not only is 

 inequality in the two sides of frequent occurrence, but a perfectly 

 symmetrical head is the exception rather than the rule. The plastic 

 condition of the cranial bones in infancy, which admits of all the 

 strange malformations of ancient Macrocephali and modern Mat- 

 heads, also renders the infant head liable to many undesigned changes. 

 Trom minute personal examination I have satisfied myself of the 

 repeated occurrence of inequality in the two sides of the head, 

 arising from the mother being able to suckle her child only at one 

 breast, so that the head was subjected to a slight but constantly re- 

 newed pressure on one side. This I have specially noted as deve- 

 loped to a very marked extent in a boy of five years old, the child of 

 a Scottish woman, wife of a farmer in Upper Canada. He was a 

 very sickly infant, and was consequently subjected to an unusually 

 protracted nursing. Perhaps also, as his teeth early decayed, and 

 he was upwards of two years old before he could walk, his bones may 

 have been more than usually pliant. He is now a healthy boy : but 

 his head is so flattened on the one side, and disproportionately convex 

 on the other, as readily to attract notice. I have found, moreover, 

 that examples of such malformation are familiar to hat manufacturers. 

 Some of the shapes they have furnished to me are odd and fantas- 

 tical ; and such as could not fail to excite as general notice as other 

 personal deformities, did not the hair suffice more or less effectually 

 to conceal them. My attention was originally directed to this famil- 



