615 
Ketzius, who occupied for niaiiy years the highest position 
und enjoyed the most extended fame in this science and 
whose loss we all must sincerely deplore, directed his vi- 
gorous powers to the investigation of the problems raised 
by these singular discoveries. The result of his inquiries 
was a conlirmation of the view of Prof. FiTZiNGER, of 
\ ienna, that these deformed crania, occurring in so many 
difterent })laces, were all referable to one ancient people, 
the Avars, an Asiatic tribe in the service of Attila, whose 
devastating wars, in which these troops were enguged, ex- 
tended over so large a portion of the continent. Prof. 
Ketzius’ memoir on these presumed Avarian skulls was 
read before the Ethnological Society of London, in 1854. 
At that time I could not help feeling some doubts re- 
specting the Avarian attribution of these crania, although 
1 had much hesitation in ditfering from an authority so 
liighly respectable as that of Eetzius. I was in some 
degree su])ported in the opinion, that different ancient 
European tribes had probably pursued the custom of dis- 
torting the skull, by the examination of an Anglo-Saxon 
womans cranium discovered in a cemetery of Harnham, in 
AViltshii’e, which, 1 believe, exhibits unequivocal marks of 
deformation occasioned by the interference of art in infancy. 
Candour however, requires me to add, that there are no 
grounds to think that the Anglo-Saxons generally practised 
the art of distortion of the head. 
So that it a])pears that deformations of the skull are 
not contined to American races, among which, however, 
it has been so prevalent and so notorious, that the lather 
of scientific craniology, Blumbenbach, thought proper to 
introduce it into the detinition of his American Variety: 
’’frontis et verticis forma plurimis arte effecta”. De Gen. 
