232 [May, 1S45- 



The Literary Record and Journal of the Linncean Association 

 of Pennsylvania College. Vol. 1, No. 7. From the As- 

 sociation. 



A History of British fossil Mammalia and Birds. By Richard 

 Owen, F. R. S. Nos. 1 to 7. From Dr. Thomas B. Wil- 

 son. 



Fifty-eighth Annual Report of the Regents of the University 

 of the State of New York. Albany, 1S45. From the 

 Regents. 



A letter was read, from Dr. Edmund Ravenel, dated 

 Charleston, S. C, April, 28, 1S45, containing some interest- 

 ing particulars respecting the geological position of certain 

 strata of that State, and indicating some new localities which 

 he had discovered for Eocene and Miocene fossils. 



A communication was read from the Directors of the 

 " Museum d'Histoire Naturelle" at Paris, dated 1st March, 

 1S45, acknowledging the reception of certain Nos. of the 

 Proceedings, and requesting the transmission of others which 

 the Association had failed to receive. 



Dr. Morton then proceeded to make some observations on 

 the three human crania deposited by him this evening, but 

 more particularly in reference to that of the Congo negro, 

 which was presented to him by Dr. David Gilbert, of Get- 

 tysburg, in this State. 



This skull pertained to an individual who could not have been 

 more than twenty years old ; and yet there is a total absence of 

 the sagittal and coronal sutures, and the lamdoidal itself is not 

 complete, while the temporal suture remains entirely open. 

 Dr. Morton called the attention of the society to a communication 

 made by him in 1841, on a skull in nearly all respects analogous 

 to the present one, and the opinion then deduced from it, viz.: 

 that the principal function of the sutures is to subserve the growth 

 of bones, which they do by osseous deposition at their margins; 



