been shown that this peculiar form of the head was present even in the
foetus of the Peruvian mummies.

Hippocrates tells us that the practice among the Scythians was for the
purpose of giving a certain aristocratic distinction.

HEADS FROM PALENQUE.

Amedee Thierry, in his "History of Attila," says the Huns used it for
the same reason; and the same purpose influences the Indians of Oregon.

Dr. Lund, a Swedish naturalist, found in the bone caves of Minas-Geraes,
Brazil, ancient human bones associated with the remains of extinct
quadrupeds. "These skulls," says Lund, "show not only the peculiarity of
the American race but in an excessive degree, even to the entire
disappearance of the forehead." Sir Robert Schomburgh found on some of
the affluents of the Orinoco a tribe known as Frog Indians, whose heads
were flattened by Nature, as shown in newly-born children.

In the accompanying plate we show the difference in the conformation of
the forehead in various races. The upper dotted line, A, represents the
shape of the European forehead; the next line, B, that of the
Australian; the next, C, that of the Mound Builder of the United States;
the next, D, that of the Guanche of the Canary Islands; and the next, E,
that of a skull from the Inca cemetery of Peru. We have but to compare
these lines with the skulls of the Egyptians, Kurds, and the heroic type
of heads in the statues of the gods of Greece, to see that there was
formerly an ancient race marked by a receding forehead; and that the
practice of flattening the skull was probably an attempt to approximate
the shape of the head to this standard of an early civilized and