CRANIAL DEFORMITIES. Certain tribes alter the shape of the skulls of their children, making use of, for this purpose, various mechanical contrivances, so as by pressure to bring about that outline which comes up to their peculiar ideas of beauty. Captain Cook noticed it in the island of Ubetea Marsden mentions it at pp. 44, 45 of his Hist. of 'Sumatra. In the Narrative of theVoyage of Her Majesty's Ship Rattlesnake, Macgillivray mentions (1852) having seen some skulls of chil dren at Cape York, alteredinto quite a conicalshape bya constantly-applied manual compression of their mothers. Dr. Miklucho - Maclay, a countryman, when visiting, in`April 1880, the islands of Torres Straits, had an oppbrtunity of seeing, at Mabiak, this strange operatibn performed on the heads of several lately-born etikiren. During the first weeks of the child's lifethe mothers are accus tomed to spend many hour*Nlfafeach day in com pressing the heads of their ants in a certain direction with the object of givIng them quite a conical s'hape. Dr. Maclay saw the operation performed daily, and on many childken and fully convinced himself that the deformit; which is perceivable in the adults is the result of this manual deformation only. It would appear that
among these people we have the only well authenticated examples of cranial deformities brought about in this way. At Mabiak the de formation is intentional ; but Dr. Maclay observed on the east side of NEW Guinea, numerous cases of distortion of the heads of adult females, in con sequence of the practice of their carrying from childhood heavy burdens in large bags, the band of which serves as a handle, and rests across the head a little behind the coronal suture, where a permanent transverse and saddle-shaped depression of the skull occurs. In some cases this depression was not less than from three to four millimetres ; and he thinks that this acquired cranial deformity has a great chance of being more or less trans mitted from generation to generation by inherit a,nce, and is therefore most worthy of being recorded.