UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 297 



Catalogue of the Leyden Anatomical Museum 1 has ten Plates 

 (Taf. xxxviii-Taf. xlvii) devoted to this particular form of disease. 

 Of the two specimens of this anchylosis which I have met with 

 amongst prehistoric skeletons, one came from the long barrow at 

 Upper Swell described by me (Article XVIII), and the other 

 belonged to the skeleton 'Paulinus, iv. 2, cxiii. 5,' which came 

 from a round barrow, and indeed may be taken as being a strikingly 

 good representative of the skeletons of the bronze-period. The 

 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 ■ Goodmanham, 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 



1 ' Museum Anatomicum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae. Descriptum ab Edvardo 

 Saudifort. 1 793-1835. There can be no doubt that this morbid condition is the same 

 as the one spoken of by Eokitansky (' Manual of Pathological Anatomy,' vol. iii. pp. 

 133, 134, and 247), and described by him as presenting an appearance as if the ' bony 

 matter had been poured in a stream over larger surfaces of a bone and had then 

 coagulated.' Eokitansky adds, 'We are quite ignorant of any general condition of 

 the system to which this can be attributed.' In default of any suggestion of his, it 

 may be well to add the following short account of the malady from a later writer, 

 Genczig, who in an Inaugural Dissertation ('Ueber Exostosen und Osteophyten') read 

 in 1846 speaks of the malady as follows, p. 14 : ' Exostosen der Wirbelknochen. Am 

 kaufigsten findet sich ein Osteophyt welches in der Form einer im Flusse erstarrten 

 Masse die vordere Flache der Wirbelkorper in geringerer oder grbsserer Ausdehnung 

 mit einander verbindet. Bisweilen findet sich dies Osteophyt ein hbheres Alter ohne 

 anderweitige Krankheiten der Wirbelsaule, bisweilen aber auch bei Caries oder 

 Tuberculose der Wirbelkorper.' I have myself observed this condition in the vertebral 

 column of a Newfoundland dog and of a horse, which are preserved in the University 

 Museum ; it is said to be normally present in the dipodidae and dasypodidae, animals, 

 it is right to add, of burrowing habits ; but it is also present in many cetacea ; and 

 I find that its occurrence as an abnormality is so well known, as to have furnished 

 commentators with a not very satisfactory explanation of Aristotle's twice repeated 

 statement as to the cervical region of the lion consisting of one single bone (see 

 A. F. A. Wiegmann, ' Observationes Zoologicae Criticae in Aristotelis Historiam Anima- 

 lium ' Berolini 1826; Arist. «Hist. An.' i. I, ad fin.; 'De Part. An.' iv. 10). 



