UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 697 



skull was noted by me as being ' typically brachy-cephalic both 

 by contour and by measurement (cephalic index = 82), and as 

 having belonged to a strong man, 5 ft. 9 in. in height, and past the 

 middle period of life/ Three of the dorsal vertebrae are glued 

 together by bony deposit on the anterior, and to some extent on 

 the lateral aspects of their centra. In this skeleton, as in two others, 

 also of tall men, from the same neighbourhood and possibly the 

 same clan, viz. ' Paulinus, viii. 2, xv. 2,' and * Goodmanhanr, xiv, ci,' 

 it is noteworthy that the last lumbar vertebra has anchylosed with 

 the first sacral, and must, as it enters by its lateral outgrowths con- 

 tinuously into the mass of bone supporting the articular surface 

 which abutted upon the ilium, have so anchylosed at an early period 

 in development. The ensiform cartilage of this skeleton is also 

 ossified, and other bones besides those already specified are similarly 

 hyperostotic. Some of the skeletal bones on the other hand, and 

 notably the scapulae, show signs of senile atrophy and thinning, 

 a point of importance to note, as regards both the cause and the 

 time of the production of the vertebral and other hyperostoses. 



A skeleton of a Little Andaman Islander described by Dr. Barnard 

 Davis, Supplement to Thesaurus Craniorum, 1875, p. 95, appears 

 to have exemplified almost every possible form of exostosis and 

 synostosis, except the important form of bony anchylosis which 

 consists in the more or less complete coalescence of the first 

 cervical vertebra with the occipital bone. On this Professor 

 Virchow has written at some length in his recently issued volume, 

 Beitrage, pp. 340-345. Professor Virchow puts on record five 

 cases of this variety, three of which have come under his own 

 observation, whilst the other two have been described by Bogstra 

 in conjunction with Boogaard and Friedlowsky. A somewhat 

 larger number are described in the already cited Catalogue of the 

 Leyden Anatomical Museum (vol. i. pp. 143, 144 ; vol. ii. Taf. xiv, 

 Taf. xv ; vol. iv. pp. 31, 46, Taf. clviii. fig. 1, 2, 3), with the 

 remark that ex descriptis specimmibus diversimode cranium cum atlante 

 concrescere constat. There are two specimens of this anchylosis in 

 the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London ; one 

 being an artificially distorted skull from Vancouver's Island, No. 

 5412 A, and the other, the existence of which was notified to me by 

 Professor Flower, being the partly-burnt skull, No. 5903, which 

 was supposed, but probably erroneously, to have belonged to a native 

 of Van Diemen's Land. We have five specimens of this very 

 interesting pathological deformation in the Oxford University 



