Depressed fractures, or congenital moulding depressions, of the skull in the newborn are uncommon. It is accepted that these depressions are of two types : the majority are caused by forceps or digital pressure from the obstetrician's hand, while a small number are due to extreme moulding of the foetal skull to permit its passage through the mother's pelvis. The latter appear to be extremely rare, since a search of the literature reveals only 18 cases?five in America (Ingraham and Matson, 1954 ; Rawl, 1957 ; Pike, 1958) and 13 in French journals (Paillas et al., 1955 ; Thurel and Baldacci, 1957)?although passing reference is made to them in textbooks of paediatrics and neurosurgery. In the past three years 31 cases have been seen in the Neuro surgical Unit of the Harare Central Hospital, Salisbury,A Rhodesia. . All these cases occurred in African women, delivered at the Harare Hospital Maternity Centre, at hospitals served by Harare Hospital, or unattended at their homes. In only three cases was there any obstetrical intervention, and in each one it seems doubtful that the intervention caused the depression. We estimated an approximate and somewhat high incidence of one in 4,000 births, while during the same period (three years) one instrumentally produced depression was observed in deliveries of 6,000 European women at the Lady Chancellor Maternity Hospital. In this country, therefore, spontaneous moulding depressions appear to be relatively common among African women. It is because of this, and its rarity in Europeans, and also the paucity of discussions in the literature, that our atten tion has been focused on this condition, both as a medical curiosity and from the aspects of prevention and cure. The condition commonly consists of a depression varying in size from a small groove to an indentation of the entire half of the frontal bone, running from the supraorbital ridge up to but never passing beyond the coronal suture (Figs.' 1 and 2), although other bones may be involved. Tracz (1960) points out that in most cases these are not true fractures but indentations of malleable bone without loss of continuity, and he postulates that they may be caused by pressure of the foetal skull from any of the following: the symphysis pubis, the sacral promontory, a deformed pelvis, obstetrical forceps, or the obstetrician's hand during manual rotation.