298 GENERAL REMARKS 



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 speciminibus 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. 

 54 [ 2 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 

 Museum, three in the Pathological Museum, and two in the 

 Ethnological Series. Of the three in the Pathological Museum, 

 one, No. 157, belonged to a man who died at the age of 73, and 

 the second, third, and fourth cervical vertebrae are anchylosed to 

 each other just as the atlas is anchylosed to the occipital. In this 

 case, as in Friedlowsky's, the posterior arch of the atlas is left 

 incomplete, an interval of two millimetres separating it into two 

 halves. The second belonged to a boy who, after suffering from 

 various scrofulous affections, died with cough, purulent expectora- 

 tion, hectic, and vomicae in the right lung, as well as extensive 

 paralysis from, no doubt, encroachment effected by the odontoid 



