More striking still is the practice of deforming the head which prevailed among the Peruvians, the Caribs of the West Indies, and the natives of Vancouver, and the Chinook Indians, wherein it attained its maximum. Among some tribes, the head was depressed from above downwards, giving the skull a cone-shape, the apex pointing backwards; among others the pressure was applied to the back and front of the head, giving a more or less globular shape, and causing the sides of the head to bulge ominously. Now these distortions are to be attributed solely to the whim of Fashion. But how could this have arisen? No adult could have started it, for the form of the skull cannot be altered once its growth is completed. The conception of this diabolical custom apparently then arose in the brain of some fiendishly ingenious person, who realized that to effect its realization pressure must be applied to the head of the infant at its birth and for some considerable time after, by squeezing the head between boards, or tying it round with thongs of hide. That disastrous results would follow from this tampering with the brain would seem an unavoidable conclusion; yet such was not the case. During the moulding process, travellers who have witnessed it tell us, children display no sign of suffering, even though their eyes seemed to be starting from their sockets from the pressure. But they cried when the thongs were loosened. On attaining to man’s estate, such victims to parental folly seemed to be in every way as intelligent as the men of neighbouring tribes which had no such insane customs. How deeply rooted was the prejudice in favour of this extraordinary fashion is shown by the fact that when, during infancy, from sickness, or other cause, the bandaging was neglected or omitted, and the child, in consequence, attained to man’s estate with a head of the shape designed by nature, he was seriously hampered in the struggle for existence, for no honours among his tribe were possible. Indeed, as often as not he was sold as a slave. But thus did Public Opinion bring disaster on its advocates, for those misguided people have been swept off the face of the earth by their own folly. Those who survived the ordeal, it is true, seemed in no way mentally deficient, but the infant mortality must have been great, and none of the adults could ever have attained to their full potentiality.