22 SMITHSONIAN MISCEI.LANEOI'S COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



There is no case of a tympanic exostosis in the 112 African and 

 American Negro crania in our collection. It will be recalled that Ost- 

 mann. in 267 Negro skulls, also found no case of these exostoses. 

 It would seem, therefore, that the true Negro was free of these 

 formations. 



No case of these tumors is found in our Melanesian and Malaysian 

 skulls, but the series of specimens here are too small. Flower, it was 

 seen, found one case of these exostoses in i of 7 Australian and in 

 I of 20 Melanesian skulls. It appears, therefore, that the condition 

 is not wholly absent either in Melanesia or Australia, though it prob- 

 ably is rare in these territories. 



Especially interesting is the apparently complete absence of ear 

 exostoses in the Chinese. No case in these people, so far as I could 

 discover, is on record, and the valuable series of 'j'j adult male Can- 

 tonese skulls in our collection shows not a trace of bony ear tumors. 

 Yet the Chinese belong fundamentally to the same yellow-brown 

 human stem as do the American Indians, who show so many of these 

 abnormalities, while on the other hand they are far apart from the 

 African Negro, who similarly appears to be free from ear exostoses. 



In the remaining groups of our table conditions differ greatly. At 

 one end of the series stand the Eskimo, first cousins of the Indians, 

 who in 1,000 skulls give but 2 with a moderate form of distinct local- 

 ized tympanic tumefaction ; at the other end are the Kentucky, South 

 Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, and \^irginia Indians, with the Hawaii 

 and New Zealand Polynesians, among whom over one-fifth to one-third 

 of the skulls show the neoplasms under consideration. The Arkansas 

 and Louisiana Indians range themselves territorially with those of 

 Tennessee and also Ohio, in whom both Blake and Russell found a 

 high incidence of these growths ; the Kentucky Indians show a slight 

 similarity to those of Tennessee ; the Dakotas are unconnected with 

 any earlier or present groups reported on in this connection ; our 

 Polynesians harmonize with Welcker's and Davis' Marquesans, who 

 also showed a high incidence of ear exostoses, and seemingly with the 

 Polynesians in general. 



From all the preceding it is plain that the highest frequency of the 

 condition is found, on one hand, among the old aborigines of the North 

 American continent, and on the other hand, in Polynesia. In North 

 America ear exostoses were most frequent in portions of the north- 

 central, south-central and central-eastern parts of the present territory 

 of the L^nited States, in the Columbia basin " flat-heads " (Oetteking), 

 in some parts, at least, of Mexico (Studley : Coahuila) ; and in South 

 America, in Peru. Peru, which was supposed to head all the Ameri- 



