One little-heeded point of evidence of this correspondence, to which I long since drew attention, is to be found in the traces of artificial modification of the head-form in ancient British crania; a comparison of which with skulls recovered from Indian grave mounds helps to throw light on the habits and social life of the British Islands in prehistoric times. In illustration of this I may refer to an exploration, now of old date. In the early summer of 1851, I learned of the accidental exposure of a stone cist, in trenching a garden at Juniper Green, a few miles distant from Edinburgh, and immediately proceeded to the spot. There, under a slightly elevated knoll—the remains, in all probability, of the ancient barrow,—lay a rude sarcophagus of unhewn sandstone, within which was a male skeleton, still in good preservation. The body had been laid on its left side, with the arms folded over the breast, and the knees drawn up so as to touch the elbows. A flat water-worn stone formed the pillow, from which the skull had rolled to the bottom of the cist. Above the right shoulder stood a gracefully formed clay vase, containing only a little sand and black dust, the remains, it may be presumed, of food which it originally contained when deposited there by affectionate hands, in some long-forgotten century. It was recovered uninjured, and is now deposited, along with the skull, in the Archæological Museum of Edinburgh. The primitive grave, thus discovered within sight of the Scottish capital, has a curious interest as a link connecting the present with a remote past. But the special point which throws light on the habits of the ancient race, is a parieto-occipital flattening, such as is of common occurrence in skulls recovered from American ossuaries and grave mounds. This feature is clearly traceable to the use of the cradle-board in infancy. The mode of nursing the Indian papoose, by bandaging it on a cradle-board, is specially adapted to the vicissitudes of a nomad forest life. The infant is carried safely, slung on the mother’s back, leaving her hands free; and in the pauses of her journey, or when engaged in field work, it can be laid aside, or suspended from the branch of a tree, without risk of injury. But one result of this custom is that the soft bones of the skull are subjected to a continuous pressure in one direction during the whole term of suckling, which is necessarily protracted, among a nomad people, much longer than is usual in settled communities; and to this cause is undoubtedly traceable the occipital flattening of many skulls recovered from European cists and barrows. Dr. L. A. Gosse, after discussing in his _Essai sur les déformations artificielles du Crâne_ certain artificial modifications of the skull, of common occurrence among the aborigines of the New World, thus proceeds: “Passant dans l’ancient continent, ne tardons-nous pas à reconnaître que ce berceau plat et solide y a produit des effets analogues.