54 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



exclusively human characteristic, but that it prevails to a 

 greater or less extent in the anthropoid apes and is antici- 

 pated at least in some of the quadrupedal mammals. 



Up to the present time investigations upon the charac- 

 ter of the lumbar curve in man have been pretty exclu- 

 sively confined to Europeans and the peoples of the 

 Pacific and Indian Oceans ; scarcely any observations 

 have been made, so far as I know, on the spines of aborig- 

 inal Americans. 



To attempt to supply this omission is the motive of 

 this paper. But, before turning to a direct examination 

 of the material in hand, it may not be out of place to 

 sum up the results of former investigators in this field. 



The literature at my immediate command is not such 

 as to enable me to attempt anything like a complete his- 

 tory of the observations on the lumbar curve, and I can 

 only mention the most important papers on the subject. 



In 1886, two papers, each preceded by an abstract, 

 appeared on the lumbar curve. The first was by Profes- 

 sor D. J. Cunningham of Dublin, in "Nature" (issue of 

 February 18th). This was an abstract of his researches 

 which were published in full in the same year under the 

 title "The Lumbar Curve in Man and Apes" (Dublin, 

 "Cunningham Memoirs," ii, 1886). The other paper was 

 by Professor W. Turner of Edinburg in the April num- 

 ber of the "Journal of Anatomy and Physiology." In 

 the same year appeared Vol. xvi of the "Challenger 

 Reports," in which Turner not only investigated the curve 

 in the skeletons collected by the Challenger expedition, 

 but incorporates also, to some extent, the results obtained 

 by Cunningham. 



The acquisition of the fresh spine of an aboriginal 

 Australian was made the subject of another paper by 



