Ethnic Significance of the Human Skull. 279 
Indian squaws, all of whom carry heavy burdens by means of 
a strap over the head or across the forehead, and to Edinburgh 
bakers, who carry their bread-boards on the crown of the 
head. But it seems doubtful if the form of the skull is ever - 
in any material degree affected, unless pressure is applied in 
very early life. 
The third cause of artificial configuration is now universally 
recognised, though it is possible that, in referring to the 
mummy of the Opas child preserved in the national collection 
at Lima, Dr Tschudi ignores results produced even by this 
familiar source of cranial deformation ; for the unsymmetrical 
form of the head figured by him is strongly suggestive of 
mechanical pressure, whether designedly or undesignedly 
applied during life, or arising solely from the rude processes 
of mummification. But, where the more general custom of in- 
humation prevails, another source of undesigned and posthu- 
mous compression comes into play, some results of which find 
striking illustration in the Indian skulls described above. To 
this neglected element of error in the ethnic value of cranial 
forms, attention was first directed by Dr Thurnham, in describ- 
ing the skull of a man about sixty years of age, found, in 1850, 
at the village of Stone, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 
along with an iron spearhead and knife, the umbo of a shield, 
and other relics, clearly recognisable as of the common forms 
and characters pertaining to Anglo-Saxon pagan sepulture. 
This skull attracted attention from features of an unusual and 
striking character. It is marked by distortion, not only involv- 
ing the most unsymmetrical deformity,—the whole right side of 
the skull having been thrust forward, and the left side propor- 
tionally thrown back, with great lateral protrusion of the 
right temporal and parietal bones,—but the articulating sur- 
face of the right temporal bone has been forced so much in 
advance of the left side as to render it no longer possible to 
replace the lower jaw, which retains its normal form. The 
remarkable distortion which this skull has undergone without 
the displacement or fracture of the bones of the calvarium, led 
at first to considerable difference of opinion as to the causes 
to which such singular malformation ought to be ascribed. 
But the impossibility of the essential vital functions of the 
