196 Mr Joseph Barnard Davis on Human Skulls 
and a considerable loss of substance, with depression on one 
side. 
No. 15 presents a certain degree of obliquity in the calva- 
rium, most apparent on the right side of the occiput, which is 
flattened. I believe this is a posthumous distortion. It will 
be seen to have occasioned a slightly greater prominence on 
the right side of the frontal bone. It is this very kind of dis- 
tortion which has been noticed so frequently in the skulls 
lately exhumed from the ruins of the Roman city of Urico- 
nium (Wroxeter), and which has given rise to so much that 
is truly absurd, both in speaking and writing, respecting the 
monstrous barbarians, with one eye before the other, and with 
frightfully misshapen heads, supposed to have been engaged 
in the destruction of this city. As it is probable that the 
famous Picts and Scots effected the overthrow of the city of 
Uriconium, and as we are now engaged with ancient skulls, 
which show their relationship to the former people, and were 
excavated in their own land, there only needs a knowledge of 
the fact that a skull so deformed has been met with in a 
Pictish cemetery, to hatch in the brains of some antiquaries 
“confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ” in behalf of 
these fictions of the imagination, truly monstrous in absurdity. 
So far, I have spoken of the skulls and the appearances 
they present on an anatomical examination only; and I have 
wished, in what I have said, expressly to avoid anything pre- 
sumptive and dogmatical. A still more generally interesting 
subject remains, on which I shall only venture a few words. 
Many persons much more thoroughly acquainted with Scottish 
history than I can be, especially those versed in the history 
of the district and city from which these crania are de- 
rived, possess, I am persuaded, better information and ability 
than I do to arrive at any conclusion as to the antiquity 
of these interments, and the particular period to which they 
appertain. 
All the interments apparently belong to Christian times, the 
bodies not having been placed in the pagan contracted posi- 
tion. There seems no ground for implicating any battle or 
any plague to account for their presence; on the contrary, 
