322 NOTICE OF A SKULL BROUGHT FROM THE CRIMEA. 
the town of Kertch, in which were preserved many historical anti- 
quities of the Crimean Bosphorus; and especially sepulchral relics 
recovered from the tumuli which abound on the site of the ancient 
Milesian colony. ~ 
Learning from an old fellow-student that he was about to proceed 
to the Crimea to join the Army Medical Staff, I wrote to him, draw- 
ing his attention to various objects worthy of observation ; and in 
directing his notice to the treasures accumulated in the Museum at 
Kertch, specially requested him to note for me—should opportunity 
offer,—the characteristics of an ancient Macrocephalic skull preserved 
there. It is referred to in Captain Jesse’s “ Notes of Travel in Cir- 
cassia and the Crimea,”’ where it is said to have been found in the 
neighbourhood of the Don. ‘The interest of such cranial remains 
increases in value, from the evidence they furnish of ancient analogies 
to the remarkable artificial compression which now we associate 
almost exclusively with American crania. 
It chanced, as is now well known, that, in the fortunes of war, the 
town of Kertch fell into the hands of the Anglo-French invaders ; and 
some few of its ancient treasures were preserved and transmitted to 
the British Museum. By far the greater portion of the Museum 
collections however, were barbarously spoiled by the rude soldiery ; 
and among the rest doubtless perished the little-heeded relic of the 
Macrocephali of the Crimea, first described by Hippocrates, five cen- 
turies before our era. Blumenbach has figured in his first Decade, 
an imperfect compressed skull, received by him from Russia, which 
he designates as that of an Asiatic Macrocephalus; and in 1843, 
Rathke commmunicated to Miller’s “ Archiv fur Anatomie,” the 
figure of another artificially compressed skull, also very imperfect, 
but specially marked by the same depression of the frontal bone. 
This example is described as procured from an ancient burial-place 
near Kertch in the Crimea; and no doubt other illustrations of the 
peculiar physical characteristics of the ancient Macrocephali of the 
Bosphorus will reward future explorers, when the attention of those 
engaged in such researches, or even in ordinary agricultural labours 
on the site, is specially directed to the interest now attaching to them. 
Meanwhile, however, my hopes of obtaining any further facts from 
the Macrocephalic cranium seen by Captain Jesse in the Kertch Mu- 
seum, had been dissipated by the dispersion and wanton destruction 
of its treasures; and I had ceased to think specially of Crimean 
