252 Dr de Tschudi on the Ancient Peruvians, 



rocks cannot often be removed without extraordinary diffi- 

 culty ; and it appears incomprehensible how the dead bodies, 

 with all their muscles attached, could be forced into them. 

 Most curious groups of mummies are found, which strongly 

 excite our curiosity. One of the most interesting was dis- 

 covered in the fortification Huickay mentioned above : — A 

 woman in the act of delivery, in a sitting posture, presses with 

 her knees forcibly against the back of a man, who is squatting 

 before her, and keeps hold of his shoulders with her hands 

 spasmodically contracted ; the head of the child is already 

 born, but the trunk and extremities are still in the genitation 

 of the mother. I intended to have sent this peculiar group to 

 Europe, but in my absence it was destroyed by the brutality 

 of a European. I found another group in which a child kept 

 firmly hold of the nipple of the mother. Together with the 

 mummies are frequently discovered skulls and skeletons of 

 animals, especially of the mammiferous genera, canis,* felis 

 (Felis onca, and concolor), lutra, mephitis, lagidium, anchenia ; 

 of birds, condors, owls, ramphastidae, prittaci^e. With the 

 mummies of children, which I dug out in the Palace of Tar- 

 motambo, I found the specimens of a species of Arara, not 

 natives of Peru, but only of the northern parts of South 

 America. Of reptiles, the tortoise is the only one which was 

 buried with the dead. I have never observed any remains 

 either of Saurians or Ophidians. 



Regarding the skulls, I will here only mention one very sin- 

 gular peculiarity. In the children of that part of the primi- 

 tive inhabitants of Western South America, who were dis- 

 tinguished by a flattened occiput, a bone is found between 

 the two parietal bones, below the lambdoidal suture, separating 

 the latter from the inferior margin of the squamous part of 

 the occiput. This bone is of a triangular shape — its upper 

 angle lies between the ossa parietalia, and its horizontal dia- 

 meter is twice that of its vertical. It coalesces at very diffe- 

 rent periods with the occipital bones, sometimes in the first 

 month after birth, and sometimes not until after six or seven 



* I hope to shew in the second number of my Fauna Peruviana, that 

 .the dog, Canis familiarisj was indigenous to Peru, and not introduced by 

 the Spaniards. 



