Ethnic Significance of the Human Skull. 273 
Another skull found in the same ancient Indian cemetery, 
apparently that of a female, and now in the collection of M. 
Guilbault, of Montreal, has also the appearance of having 
been modified in form by artificial means, whether posthu- 
mous or otherwise. The superciliary ridges are prominent, 
the frontal bone is receding, but convex, and the occipital 
bone has considerable posterior projection, which is rendered 
the more prominent by a general flattening of the coronal 
region, and a very marked depression immediately over the 
lambdoidal suture, probably the result of unequal posthumous 
compression. The abnormal conformation of this skull is 
shown in the proportions of the intermastoid arch, which mea- 
sures only 11°75, while the normal mean, so far as ascertained 
by me from measurements of thirty-three examples of Algon- 
quin crania, is 14°34, and of thirty-six examples of Huron 
erania is 14°70. | 
The great importance now justly attached to the form and 
relative proportions of the human skull, as elements of classi- 
fication in physical ethnology, confers a new significance on 
all external forces affecting its normal ethnic condition. In- 
fluences artificially superinduced upon those conditions which, 
in relation to all other animals, would be regarded as their 
natural state, tend greatly to complicate that novel depart- 
ment of Natural History which deals with man as its pecu- 
har subject ; and in no respect is this more apparent than in 
the form of the human head. It is man’s normal condition to 
be subjected to many artificial influences ; and this fact must 
never be lost sight of by the ethnologist. In the rudest stage 
of savage life, which is sometimes, on very questionable 
grounds, characterised as a state of nature, man clothes and 
houses himself, makes and uses weapons and tools, and sub- 
jects his infant offspring to many influences dependent upon 
hereditary custom, taste, or superstitious obligations. All 
those tend to leave permanent results stamped on the indivi- 
dual, and, when universally practised, confer on the tribe cr 
nation some artificial ethnological characteristics which are 
nevertheless as essentially foreign to any distinctive innate 
peculiarity as tatooing, circumcision, or other similar operation 
admitting of universal application. The naturalist has to deal 
