DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 443 



artificial flattening which the Islander had stated to hia medical 

 attendants in the hospital, was habitually practised in his family.* 



Dr. Morton, — as I pointed out when first noticing the probable 

 artificial origin of an occipital form peculiar to certain British skulls, — 

 had already recognised undesigned artificial compression as one source 

 of abnormal cranial conformation, and he accompanied its demonstra- 

 tion with a reference to the predominant unsymmetrical form in all 

 such skulls. " This irregularity," he added, " chiefly consists in the 

 greater projection of the occiput to one side than the other," and 

 ** is not to be attributed to the intentional application of mechanical 

 force." Such want of uniformity in the two sides of the head is 

 much more strongly marked in the Elathead skulls, which have been 

 subjected to great compression. It is clearly traceable to the difiieulty 

 of subjecting the living and growing head to a perfectly uniform and 

 equable pressure, and to the cerebral mass forcing the skull to 

 expand with it in the direction of least resistance. Hence the 

 unsymmetrical form accompanying the vertical occiput in the Lesmur- 

 die and Juniper Green skulls. Wherever therefore a very noticable 

 inequality exists between the two sides of a skull, it may be traced 

 with much probability to designed or accidental compression in 

 infancy; and by its frequent occurrence in any uniform aspect, may, 

 quite as much as the flattened occiput, furnish a clue to customs or 

 modes of nurture among the people to whom it pertains. 



In so far as the preceding observations refer to British crania, and 

 their artificial distortion, I have anticipated remarks already prepared 

 for publication in a difierent form, owing to the appearance in the 

 July number of the Natural History Review, of an article from the 

 pen of Mr. Joseph Barnard Davis, entitled: "Note on the Distortions 

 which present themselves in the cranium of the ancient Britons." In 

 this the author begins by remarking : " During the lengthened and 

 minute investigation of ancient British skulls, to which I have been 

 impelled by the preparation of the ' Crania Britannica,' I have been 

 frequently struck with a peculiar flatness in the occipital region pre- 

 vailing among them. It often extends over a good part of the parietals, 

 about the posterior portion of the sagittal suture, and over tlie upper 

 part of the occipital bone. Hence I have denominated it parieto- 

 occipital flatness.'"' He next proceeds to notice the results of posthu- 

 mous compression in the distortion produced by the pressure of the 



♦ Types of Mankind, p. 436. 



