DR. J. THURI^AM OIT SYNOSTOSIS OF THE CRAJ^IAL BONES. 215 



withiu the first year of life, in a certain proportion of cases never 

 closes, except with the other sutures in advanced age. The diiference in 

 the liability to the persistent frontal suture in differeut races must be 

 known to all who are in the habit of examining skulls. In most Euro- 

 peans it is by no means rare, and seems to occur in the proportion of 

 about one in ten, in English, Grerman, and Erench skulls.* Professor 

 Welcker, who has devoted much attention to this subject, tells us 

 that the open frontal suture is much less connnon in the inferior 

 races ; that in Mongols it is about as one in fourteen, in Malays 

 about one in twenty, and in Americans and Negroes about one in 

 forty or fifty -f AVelcker indeed barely admits its possibility in the 

 Negro, and says he has never seen an instance. M. Pruner-Bey 

 tells us he only saw it once in the large number of African skulls 

 which he examined. There can be no doubt that it is extremely 

 rare. In Dr. Barnard Davis's collection, there are about ninety 

 Negro and Negroid skulls, and in not one is the frontal suture seen. 

 On the other hand, in the series of 166 of such skulls in the 

 Museum of the Army Medical Department, there are four (Ibo, 

 Krooman and Ashantee), in which it is persistent. J Altogether, 

 its great rarity is clearly a race-character in the Negro. In a less 

 degree, the same seems to have been the case with the dolichocepha- 

 lous Britons of the stone period. Out of about 100 or 120 skulls 

 and calvaria, which I have examined from the Long Barrows, I have 

 found traces of the frontal suture in only four adult specimens. § 

 This gives a proportion of one in twenty-five or thirty. In the 

 brachycephalous skulls from the Eound Burrows, the open state of 

 this suture is much more common ; or according lo my observations, 

 about one in fifteen, which approaches that in modern Europeans. 



* In the Museum of the Army Medical Department at Netley, out of 169 skulls 

 of English soldiers, (natives of England and Ireland) I counted sixteen in which this 

 suture is persistent, or nearly one in ten. In Germans, we learn from Professor 

 Welcker, that it occurs as often as one in nine. { Wachstlmm unci Bau, p. 99-100). 

 In the immense collection of French skulls in the catacombs of Paris, Dr. Leach 

 counted it in numerous instances, and in the proportion of at least one in eleven. 

 (Clift, Cutal. 3Ius. Coll. Surgeons, part iii, 1831, p. 7). 



t Wachsthum unci Bau. p. 99-100, 143. 



:j: G. Wilhamson, M.D. Human Crania in Mus. Armrj Medical Department ^ 

 1857, p. 78. 



§ One is from the chambered barrow of West Kennet (No. 137) ; another from 

 that of Rodmaton (No. 166, see woodcut, Cran. Brit. PI. 59, p. (4j ; two others 

 are from the long barrow at Dinnington. There are also two infant skulls, one 

 from Tilshead, the other from Charlton Abbots, in which the same is seen : though 

 the last seems to have belonged to a secondary interment. 



