1848.] 75 



^iugust 8th, 184-8. 

 Vice President Morton in the Chair. 



The Curators exhibited the extensive and valuable collection of casts 

 of Sivalik fossils, presented by the Hon. Court of Directors of the 

 East India Company to this Society. (See list at page 79.) 



The Publication Committee announced the publication of the second 

 Number of the New Series of the Journal of the Academy. 



Dr. Morton offered the following remarks on four skulls of Shosho- 

 nee Indians, deposited by him this evening. 



" They are the first cranial remains of that singular tribe, that have 

 ever been brought to this city. They were obtained by our associate, 

 Col. J. C. Fremont,* a gentleman whose extensive explorations have 

 enriched every branch of natural science. The Shoshonees, or Diggers, 

 are proverbially known for their low position in the mental and moral 

 scale of our aboriginal tribes. They wander about in small commu- 

 nities ; have no villages ; build no cabins ; plant no corn, nor cultivate 

 any vegetable. The}'- protect themselves from the weather, under the 

 edges of rocks, and go scantily clothed in the skins of wild animals. 



" Two out of four of these skulls are so small, so receding in the fore- 

 head, and so depressed over the whole coronal region, that they could 

 not, by intrinsic evidence alone, have been identified with any branch 

 of the aboriginal American race. They want the vertical occiput and 

 general rounded form of the Indian head, and have a narrowness of 

 the face unusual with these people. I submit the following brief 

 memoranda : 



" 1. Skull of a woman of thirty-five or forty years of age. The 

 anterior region is contracted in all its diameters ; the forehead very 

 low and receding, so as to give a facial angle of but seventy degrees. 

 The posterior region is remarkably full in proportion, and the internal 

 capacity gives seventy-three cubic inches as the bulk of the brain. 



" 2. Another skull of a woman of twenty-five or thirty years, of a 

 conformation like the preceding. The facial angle is larger, but the in- 

 ternal capacity is but seventy-one cubic inches. 



" 3. Skull of a woman of fifty. The developments much like those 

 of the two preceding heads. The forehead is very low ; the face 

 broad, heavy, and protruding ; but the vertex is high, and the occiput 

 combines the vertical form and great lateral diameter with that of the 

 common Indian head. Internal capacity eighty-four cubic inches. 



" These three crania were found nearly together, a few miles from the 

 expansion of Humboldt's river in the Shoshonee country, and Captain 

 Fremont was entirely satisfied that they belonged to people of that 

 nation. 



" Heads of such small capacity and ill-balanced proportions, could 



•They were obligingly placed in my hands by Mr. Edward M. Kern, the in- 

 genious draftsman of Col. Fremont's expedition. 



