i 9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. , 



Indian ; and more than half the lot from Kauai had the peculiarity in 

 the nostrils first pointed out in the negro by Dr. John Neil, of Phila- 

 delphia, namely, the deficiency of the sharp ridge which forms the 

 lower border of the opening. In its jjlace is a rounded border, or an 

 inclined plane. 



This feature occurs very frequently in different races, but more 

 rarely in Europeans. It is, however, never absent in the apes. Prof. 

 Wyman, in studying the characters of certain ancient crania from a 

 burial-place near Shell Mound, Florida, observed the foramen mag- 

 num quite far back, and remarks on the massive character of the bones 

 composing the skull, the parietal being nearly twice the thickness of 

 ordinary parietals, while the general roughness of the surfaces for 

 muscular attachments on the hinder part of the head is very strik- 

 ing. 1 



In certain measurements of synostotic crania, Prof. "Wyman 

 found that the length of the parietals was twenty-four millimetres 

 above the average, the parietals being lengthened from before back- 

 ward, the frontal and occipital being but slightly augmented. Now, 

 in the much-discussed Neanderthal skull, wherein it is urged by Dr. 

 Davis that it is a synostotic skull, though denied by Huxley, Wyman 

 shows that the parietals measure nine millimetres below the average, 

 which is certainly against the view that the Neanderthal skull is 

 synostotic. 3 



In an essay entitled " Observations on Crania and Other Parts of. 

 the Skeleton," Prof. Wyman shows that the relative capacity of the 

 skull " is to be considered merely as an anatomical and not as a 

 physiological characteristic," 3 a most important distinction certainly 

 in considering the large capacity of certain ancient skulls, since we 

 must know the quality as well as the quantity in order to assume the 

 intellectual position of the races. In this essay are also quoted the 

 results of a large series of measurements made by Dr. B. A. Gould, 

 in which it is shown that the arms of the blacks are relatively longer 

 as compared with the whites, in this respect approaching the higher 

 animals, a confirmation of the observations made by Broca, Pruner 

 Bey, Lawrence, and others. 



The perforation of the humerus, which occurs in the apes quite 

 generally, was found to occur rarely in the white race. Of fifty 

 humeri, Wyman found but two perforated, while of Indian humeri 

 he found thirty-one per cent, perforated. In some of the remains of 

 ancient men there has been found a remarkable lateral flattening of 

 the tibia, unlike anything found at present, but always characteris- 

 tic of the earliest races. These tibiae have received the name of 

 platycnemic tibiae. 



1 " Fourth Annual Report of the Peabody Archaeological Museum. Cambridge." 



" Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History," vol. xi., p. 455. 

 3 " Fourth Annual Report of the Peabody Archaeological Museum." 



