skulls of the Avars, a branch of the Uralian race of Turks. He shows
that the practice of flattening the head had existed from an early date
throughout the East, and described an ancient skull, greatly distorted
by artificial means, which had lately been found in Lower Austria.
Skulls similarly flattened have been found in Switzerland and Savoy. The
Huns under Attila had the same practice of flattening the heads.
Professor Anders Retzius proved (see "Smithsonian Report," 1859) that
the custom still exists in the south of France, and in parts of Turkey.
"Not long since a French physician surprised the world by the fact that
nurses in Normandy were still giving the children's heads a sugar-loaf
shape by bandages and a tight cap,

STUCCO BAS-RELIEF IN THE PALACE OF PALENQUE.

while in Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are
doing so to this day." (Tylor's "Anthropology," p. 241.)

Professor Wilson remarks:

"Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact
brought under our notice, by the disclosures of ancient barrows and
cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it
about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the north
of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the
presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in
all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores
of the German Ocean to Behring's Strait." ("Smithsonian Report," 1862,
p. 286.)

Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the