DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM. 445 



the Newbigging skull, occurs in the Third Decade, dated, in the accom- 

 panying editorial note on the wrapper, September, 1858, and reads 

 as follows : " Regarding the cranium from behind, there is an obvious 

 irregularity in the sides of the occiput ; the right bulging out more 

 than the left. This appearance, which is common to this and the 

 Juniper Green and Lesmurdie crania and others, may not improperly 

 lead us to question whether a slight distorting process may not have 

 influenced the cranial conformation of the Britons, at least of the 

 northern tribes."* In these remarks, published more than a year after I 

 had in nearly similar words, suggested " whether such may not furnish 

 an indication of some partial compression,"t &c., the writer appears 

 to have still followed me, even in his limiting this cranial conformation 

 to "the northern tribes." But in a subsequent and it is to be pre- 

 sumed later written portion of the same Decade, devoted to the des- 

 cription of a skull from the Caedegai barrow, on the domain of Plas 

 Heaton, Denbighshire, where no such feature furnishes any reason for 

 introducing the subject, he thus returns to it : — 



" In this cranium we possess the native unmodified form of head of the ancient 

 Cymric Briton. Our description of those from Juniper Green, Lesmurdie, and 

 Newbigging, has made known an unusual and rather abrupt flattening in the 

 occipital region, which we consider to have been the work of art at an early 

 period of life.J A few remarks upon this subject occur in the description of the 

 last skull, where we were unable to insert any allusion to similar deformations 

 in other races. Among the American races in general, there is so marked a flat- 

 ness in the occipital region that Professor Morton was induced to regard it as 

 one of the few typical characters of the skull belonging to the American nations, 

 and spreading from one end of the continent to the other. This position, which 

 is no doubt founded in truth, must be allowed to be liable to many exceptions. 

 Yet the crania of Americans figured by Sandifort and by Milne-Edwards, the 

 latter given as a typical skull, are both distinguished by a considerable occipital 

 projection. Professor Daniel Wilson, of Toronto, in an able paper, (Canadian 

 Journal, 1857, Vol. II., p. 406), has expressed a reasonable doubt whether this 

 occipital flatness, or great vertical diameter, be properly a universal character of 

 the American races, and has supported his argument by observations made upon 

 crania disinterred in Canada, and considered to have belonged to the Iroquois 

 and Hurons. He has also given expression to a query, which the examination of 

 skulls remarkable for vertical diameter and flatness of occiput naturally in- 

 duces, whether the American races may not owe these cranial characters, in 



* Crania Britannica, Decade III. pi. 21, (4). 



t Ante, p. 403. 



t As shown by previous extracts from the original descriptions of the Juniper Green and 

 Lesmurdie skulls, this flattening, " the work of art at an early period of life," is an opinion 

 subsequently adopted. It is there ascribed to posthumous deformation. 



