72 Professor D. Wilson’s Jllustrations of the Significance 
East. The so-called Moors, or Arabs of North Africa, 
affected this form of skull; and even in modern times, the 
women of Belgium and Hamburg are both described as 
compressing the heads of their infants into an elongate 
form. Our own observations lead at least to a presumption 
that this form of artificial distortion may have been practised 
by certain primeval British tribes, particularly those who 
buried their distinguished dead in long chambered tumuli.” 
Accordingly, Dr Thurnam draws attention to the oblitera- 
tion of the sagittal suture, both in the skull in question, and 
to a still greater extent in one figured by Blumenbach, 
under the name of “ Asiatic Macrocephali,” and expresses 
his belief that this “‘ has been produced by pressure or mani- 
pulations of the sides of the head in infancy, by which it 
was sought to favour the development of a lengthened form 
of skull; to which, however, there was probably, in the 
present instance, at least, a natural and inherent tendency.” 
It thus appears that a class of variations of the form of 
the human skull, which becomes more comprehensive as 
attention is directed to it, is wholly independent of con- 
genital transmitted characteristics: kumbecephalic, acro- 
cephalic, and platycephalic, unsymmetrical, truncated, or 
elongated heads, may be so common as apparently to fur- 
nish distinctive ethnical forms, and yet, after all, each may 
be traceable to artificial causes, arising from an adherence 
to certain customs and usages in the nursery. It is in this 
direction, I conceive, that the importance of the truths 
resulting from the recognition of artificial causes affecting 
the forms of British brachycephalic or other crania chiefly 
lies. The contents of early British cists and barrows prove 
that the race with whom they originated was a rude people, - 
ignorant, for the most part, of the very knowledge of metals, | 
or at best in the earliest rudimentary stage of metallurgic 
arts. They were, in fact, in as uncivilised a condition as 
the rudest forest Indians of America. To prove, therefore, 
that, like the Red Indian squaw, the British allophylian or 
Celtic mother formed the cradle for her babe of a flat board, 
to which she bound it, for safety and facility of nursing, in 
the vicissitudes of her nomade life,—though interesting, 
like every other recovered glimpse of a long-forgotten past,— 
asi = 
