of certain Ancient British Skull Forms. 19 
what part of the back of the head touches the ground, he 
will find that it is the portion of the occiput immediately 
above the lambdoidal suture, and not the occiptal bone. 
When the Indian mother places a sufficiently high pillow 
for her infant, the tendency of the constant pressure will be 
to produce the vertical occiput; but where, as is more 
frequently the case, the board has a mere cover of moss or 
soft leather, then the result will be just such an oblique 
parietal flattening as is shown on a British skull from 
the remarkable tumulus near Littleton Drew, Wiltshire, 
figured in the ‘“ Crania Britannica,” Decade iii., plate 24. 
But there are other sources of modification of the human 
skull in infancy, even more common than the cradle-board. 
More than one of the predominant head-forms in Normandy 
and Belgium are now traced to artificial changes, and by 
many apparently trifling and unheeded causes, consequent 
on national customs, nursing usages, or the caprices of dress 
and fashion, the form of the head may be modified in the 
nursery. The constant laying of the infant to rest on its 
side, the pressure in the same direction in nursing it, along 
with the fashion of cap, hat, or wrappage, may all influence 
the shape of head among civilised nations, and in certain cases 
tend as much to exaggerate the naturally dolichocephalic 
skull, as the Indian cradle-board increases the short diameter 
of the opposite type. Such artificial cranial forms as that 
designated by M. Foville the Téte annulaire, may have pre- 
dominated for many centuries throughout certain rural dis- 
tricts of France, solely from the unreasoning conformity 
with which the rustic nurse adhered to the traditional or 
prescriptive bandages to which he ascribes that distortion. 
All experience shows that such usages are among the least 
eradicable, and long survive the shock of revolutions that 
change dynasties and efface more important national char- 
acteristics. 
But now that attention has been directed to the subject 
of undesigned changes thus effected on the human head, 
its full bearings begin to be appreciated ; and there is even, 
perhaps, a danger that more may be ascribed to them than is 
legitimate. Such was undoubtedly the effect on Dr Morton’s 
mind from his familiarity with the results of artificial de- 
