420 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNEB ARTIFICIAL 



head has assumed its determinate form, dependent mainly on the 

 influences affecting it during the first year. This is the result of 

 design ; but by many apparently trifling and unheeded causes, con- 

 sequent on national customs, nursing usages, or the caprices of dress 

 and fashion, the form of the head may be modified in the nursery. 

 The constant laying of the infant to rest on its side, the pressure in 

 the same direction in nursing it, along with the fashion of cap, hat, 

 or wrappage, may all influence the shape of head among civilised 

 nations, and in certain eases tend as much to exagerate the naturally 

 dolichoeephahc skull, as the Indian cradle-board to increase the short 

 diameter of the opposite type. Such artificial cranial forms as that 

 designated by M. Foville, the Tete annulaire, may have predominated 

 for many centuries throughout certain rural districts of Erance, 

 solely from the unreasoning conformity with which the rustic nurse 

 adhered to the traditional or prescriptive bandages to which hje 

 ascribes that distortion. All experience shows that such usages are 

 among the least eradicable, and long survive the shock of revolutions 

 that change dynasties and efface more important national charactei'- 

 istics. To such causes as the helmet of the Roman soldier, and the 

 turban of the Turk, some writers have assigned the sources of 

 national forms of head. But the dome of the skull acquires a firm 

 consistency, along with its permanent shape in youth, and appears 

 thereafter to resist all external pressure less than that which sujQSlces 

 to crush the bony arch, until the vital spark has fled. Then, deprived 

 of its vascular covering, or softened by the chemical action of its 

 decaying tissues, and subjected to moisture and unwonted compres- 

 sion, some of the peculiar abnormal shapes are produced, now recog- 

 nised as clearly traceable to posthumous action. 



But now that attention has been directed to this subject, its full 

 bearings begin to be appreciated, and the operation of artificial causes 

 is recognised in the modification of the dolichocephalic as well as 

 the brachy cephalic head. More recent studies in the New "World 

 have satisfied me of the occurrence of both types in the same Peru- 

 vian cemeteries, — not as examples of extreme latitudes of form in a 

 common race, but as the results of the admixture either of conquer- 

 ing and subject races, or of distinct classes of nobles and serfs, 

 most generally resulting from the predominance of conquerors. 

 Among the Peruvians the elongated cranium pertained to the domi- 

 nant race ; and some of the results of later researches in primitive 



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