1867.] 113 IReade. 



their precarious support, brings down slides towards the climber. At 

 the summit of each is a depression out of which the cinders were thrown 

 during their formation. The two gaps, the eastern and northern, 

 ah-eady spoken of, probably did not exist until towards the close of 

 the period of activity of this volcano, or we should not see the dis- 

 tinct bedding of the mountains surrounding it, which could be pro- 

 duced only by the overflowing of the lava from vents higher than 

 the present floor of the crater, or from a filling up and overflowing 

 of the crater, as is so well known to have occurred in similar cases on 

 the adjacent island of Hawaii. 



Mr. Winwood Reade of England, who was present as a 

 visitor, read to the Society a paper upon the habits of the 

 Gorilla, the result of his personal investigation in the Gaboon 

 region. He claimed from the accounts furnished him by Du 

 Chaillu's guides, and others whom he examined critically in 

 Afi-ica, that the statements of Du Chaillu were not worthy 

 of credence. He maintained, however, that other assertions 

 of Du Chaillu which had been questioned by some, such as 

 the cannibalism of the Fans, the mode of entrapping ele- 

 phants, and the method of manufacture of musical instru- 

 ments were without doubt correct. 



Dr. Ogden presented a humerus of an Indian, dug from 

 the banks of the Merrimac, in which the olecranon fossa was 

 j^erforated, a peculiarity which Dr. Jackson had noticed in 

 many Indian skeletons. 



Dr. J. Wyman stated that this occurred not uncommonly 

 in the white man ; some years since he had examined all the 

 humei'i of Africans in the Jardin des Plantes, and found 

 one-half with this perforation ; he had also found it in the 

 Gorilla. 



Dr. J. B. S. Jackson said that he had examined six or seven 

 Indian humeri from one of the islands in Boston harbor, and 

 had found that all but one or two were perforated. In a 

 Flathead which had died in this city, both humeri were per- 

 forated. 



Dr. Jackson also stated that he had recently examined a 

 human foetus in which synosteosis of the parietal bones had 

 begun, and in consequence of which the head had already 



PROCKEniNGS B. 8. N. H. — VOL. XI. 8 .JUNE, 1867. 



