68 Professor D. Wilson’s Illustrations of the Significance 
find this head, instead of being either oval, or, as Blumen- 
bach describes the example selected by him, subglobular : 
presenting the truncated form, with extreme breadth at the 
parietal protuberances, and then abruptly passing to a flat- 
tened occiput. It measures 6°5 longitudinal diameter ; 5-7 
parietal diameter ; and 19:2 horizontal circumference. But 
the most noticeable feature is the great inequality of the 
two sides, the right side is less tumid than the left, while it 
projects more to the rear, and the whole is fully as unsym- 
metrical as many American crania. Were it not that this 
feature appears to have wholly escaped Dr Morton’s atten- 
tion, as he merely enters it in his catalogue as a “ Cast of 
the skull of a young Greek. Professor Retzius,” I should 
be tempted to suppose it had been purposely sent to him to 
illustrate the phenomena of unsymmetrical development, 
and of the influence of undesigned artificial causes on skull- 
forms. Nor was Dr Morton unobservant of such indications. 
When first noticing the probable origin of the flattened 
occiput of certain British skulls, I drew attention to the fact, 
that he had already recognised undesigned artificial com- 
pression as one source of abnormal cranial conformation, 
and accompanied its demonstration with a reference to the 
predominant unsymmetrical form in all such skulls. ‘ This 
irregularity,” he added, “ chiefly consists in the greater pro- 
jection of the occiput to one side than the other,” and “ is 
not to be attributed to the intentional application of mecha- 
nical force.” Such want of uniformity in the two sides 
of the head is much more strongly marked in Flathead 
skulls, which have been subjected to great compression. It 
is clearly traceable to the difficulty of subjecting the living 
and growing head to a perfectly uniform and equable pres- 
sure, and to the cerebral mass forcing the skull to expand 
with it in the direction of least resistance. Hence the un- 
symmetrical form accompanying the vertical occiput in the 
Lesmurdie and Juniper Green skulls, and, as I conceive also, 
in the Greek skull of Retzius. The study of the latter 
skull-form has tended strongly to confirm me in the belief, 
that the extreme abbreviated proportions of many naturally 
brachycephalic crania are due to artificial causes. Wherever 
a very noticeable inequality exists between the two sides, 
