606 DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



see United States Reports, Circular No. 6, War Department, 

 Surgeon-General's Office, Washington, p. 12, Nov. 1, 1865. A spear 

 or celt of metal if driven with force at a living head might very well 

 raise a splinter of bone out of the two external layers of the bony 

 cranium, especially if the recipient was lying on the ground and 

 rolled his head as much out of the way as he could as the blow 

 descended. The splinter would probably, in the first instance, be 

 left adhering to the scalp, and might have taken up its old place 

 again. Here it has been lost ; but that the patient survived its 

 separation, at least from all connexion with the bone of which it 

 once formed a part, the state of that bone furnishes fair evidence. 

 On looking carefully with a lens at the edges of the wound formed 

 by the external table of the skull, it will be seen that, though the 

 maeandering channels formed for themselves by plant rootlets have 

 had something to do with making the surface what it is, still some 

 process of smoothing down due to the vital operations of the skull 

 itself is recognisable upon them. The lamellar arrangement of the 

 outer table is still distinctly visible, nevertheless the surface is not 

 as sharply defined anywhere as it must have been when the wound 

 was first inflicted. To allow of this smoothing down being 

 effected not more than two or three months would be required ; in 

 the very instructive histories given of the owners of skulls in the 

 Berlin Museum (see Walter's Museum Anatomicum, 1805, p. 468) 

 which had had sword-cuts inflicted upon them, a process of healing 

 effected novo succo osseo affluente et annitente ut vulnus claudat takes 

 only paucos menses, and in one case (2394) only two months. Yet 

 this process is one requiring more time than the process of 

 absorptive smoothing which is all we have signs of here. The 

 unclosed vacuities in the diploe show that the wound was never 

 healed, unless we are to suppose that the rootlets above mentioned 

 have removed away cleanly and entirely that glaze of bone which in 

 skulls so wounded is deposited over the injured area. The death of 

 the man therefore, though occurring within a comparatively short 

 time from the receiving of this wound, must have been due to some 

 other cause than the mere wound itself. 



In the occipital norma the wall-sidedness of the lateral boundaries 

 of the pentagon described by the contour lines in this aspect and 

 the vertical carination characteristic of male skulls of this type are 

 eminently noteworthy 1 . 



1 A female skull, ' Langton Wold ii,' very closely resembling the one just described, 

 lias been obtained from the same barrow. It belonged however to a very much older 



