444 ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICIAL 



superincumbent earth acting constantly upon the moist and slightly 

 plastic skull ; and then proceeds thus : " Others, whose remains were 

 inclosed in cists, kistvaens, and cromlechs, were mostly defended from 

 the mechanical influences which produced posthumous deformation. 

 Still the effects of this kind of compression are often evident in the 

 occipital region. Hence they serve to interfere with our appreciation 

 of that deformity which manifests itself in the parieto-occipital flatness. 

 It was only after witnessing many examples in which both kinds of 

 distortions were present, and observing that they were not coincident, 

 but quite independent of each other, that their real distinctness became 

 fully apparent." From observation of many artificially flattened 

 Indian skulls, female as well as male, including those obtained from 

 canoe-biers on the Columbia River which had never been interred, I 

 have been led to form a different opinion, and believe that what Mr. 

 Davis describes as " the original parieto-occipital flatness, and at the 

 same time another distinct and non-coincident flattening, generally on 

 one side of the occipital region which is clearly posthumous," are in 

 reality both results of the same pressure, and produced in infancy. I 

 cannot, moreover, conceive of any pressure on a skull inclosed in a 

 shallow stone cist capable of affecting its shape. If so slight a cause 

 could do so, the wonder would be that we should ever disinter a sym- 

 metrical skull, or indeed one not violently distorted. " To this sub- 

 ject" Mr. Davis adds, " I have directed attention in the description of 

 the Newbigging skull in the Crania Britannica, plate 21, p. (4,) and 

 more at length in the description of the Green Lowe skull, plate 41, 



p. (2) " 



I think it only just to myself, and to this journal, in which my 

 remarks on the artificial origin of the vertical occiput appeared, not 

 only to claim priority in the publication of ideas now reproduced by 

 Mr. Davis ; but to assign my reasons for considering that he only 

 repeats and enlarges on remarks originally produced in this journal. 

 Under ordinary circumstances I should have left this unnoticed ; but 

 it happens unfortunately that in a forthcoming work, the sheets of 

 which are already thrown off, I have spoken of Mr. Davis as " giving 

 the weight of his concurring testimony " to ideas which, so far as now 

 appears, he claims to have been the first to make known. I have not 

 yet seen the notice of the subject referred to above, as introduced in 

 the description of the Green Lowe skull : the Fifth Decade of the Crania 

 Britannica not having yet reached Canada. That in the description of 



