MUNIZ—MC GEE] ELEVATING AND RASPING 57 
tation have been obliterated by subsequent smoothing of edges or physi- 
ologic action. There is no case in which traces of incising persist that 
does not afford suggestion or more decisive proof of the employment of 
an eleyatory process. 
The process of rasping is distinctly exemplified by several of the 
specimens. Perhaps the clearest evidence is that afforded by cranium 
16, which displays a complete operation without trace of incision or 
elevation, apparently produced wholly by rasping, scraping, or grind- 
ing. It is true that the outlying marks are for the most part indistinct, 
but this may be ascribed to increasing delicacy of manipulation as the 
process was brought to an end—a delicacy attested by the paper-like 
thinness of the remaining margin of the inner table; and a sufficient 
number of striz are preserved to at least suggest the extension of the 
process over the entire area of this particular operation. In addition, 
unmistakable marks of rasping or scraping follow the ghastly fissure 
for at least 50 mm., where they merge into exploratory scratches. In 
cranium 10 the conformation of the aperture and its margins and the 
adjacent portions of the skull suggest that the entire operation was 
performed by rasping or scraping, precisely as in cranium 16, without 
attendant incision, although in this case all direct traces of instrumen- 
tation have been obliterated by reparative process. In cranium 12 (the 
later operation) the process of rasping or scraping was carried over a 
considerable area, and one of the three apertures appears to have been 
produced wholly by this process; and in crania 17 (the upper opening) 
and 19 the apertures are circumscribed by approximately concentric 
strie, showing that the process was employed for working down rough 
edges. So, too, in ecrania 7 (the later operation) and 18 (the latest 
operation) the strive are so disposed as clearly to indicate that rasping 
was employed to smooth the bony edges and obliterate the rough pro- 
jecting kerfs due to irregularity in incision, and the same relation is 
indicated with almost equal clearness by the strive about the nearly 
circular aperture in cranium 8. 
Several of the specimens are without traces of rasping or scraping. 
These fall into two groups, in one of which the operation was evidently 
incomplete, while in the second the more delicate (at least) of the marks 
of instrumentation haye been obliterated by physiologic process. ‘To 
the first group belong erania 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,14, and 15, all of which 
afford independent indications that the subjects died under the knife, 
either in consequence of the original lesion or from the effects of the 
operation. The second group comprises crania 7 (the earlier opera- 
tion), 15 (both operations), and 18 (the two earlier operations), with 
more doubtfully crania 9 and 11, in which there is collateral evidence 
of long survival and extensive reparative process. In every case in 
which the operation was presumptively complete, and in which traces 
of instrumentation have not presumptively been obliterated by physio- 
logic action, as well as in several others, rasping is exemplified. 
