of certain Ancient British Skull Forms. 83 
occipital flattening is clearly defined in at least three of the 
Kanaka skulls in the Mortonian Collection; No. 1300, a 
male native of the Sandwich Islands, aged about forty ; 
No. 1308, apparently that of a woman, from the same 
locality ; and in No. 695, a girl of Oahu, of probably twelve 
years of age, which is markedly unsymmetrical, and with the 
flattening on the left side of the parietal and occipital bones. 
The Washington Collection includes fourteen Kanaka skulls; 
besides others from various islands of the Pacific, among 
which several examples of the same artificial formation 
occur: eg., No. 4587, a large male skull, distorted and 
unsymmetrical; and No. 4367, female? from an ancient 
cemetery at Wailuka, Mani, in which the flattened occiput 
is very obvious. 
The traces of purposed deformation of the head among 
the islanders of the Pacific have an additional interest in its 
relation to one possible source of South American population 
by oceanic migration, suggested by philological and other - 
independent evidence. But for our present purpose, the 
peculiar value of those modified skulls lies in the disclosures 
of influences operating alike undesignedly, and with a well- 
defined purpose, in producing the very same’ cranial con- 
formation among races occupying the British Islands in 
ages long anterior to earliest history ; and among the savage 
tribes of America and the simple islanders of the Pacific in 
the present day. They illustrate with even greater force 
than the rude implements of flint and stone found in early 
British graves, the exceedingly primitive condition of the 
British Islanders of prehistoric times. 
On Variation in the Number of Fingers and Toes, and 
in the Number of Phalanges, in Man. By JOHN STRUTHERS, 
M.D., F.R.C.S., Lecturer on Anatomy in the Edinburgh 
School of Medicine. (Plate IT.) 
At the present time when the subject of variation is 
attracting so much attention, the following illustrations 
will, perhaps, be read with additional interest. I have 
arranged the cases of increase in the number of digits into 
