63 



found close together, covered with and filled by an accviniulatlon of fine 

 vegetable and organic mold. In each was the remains of a skeleton in the 

 last stages of decay. It had evidently been tied np in the Innuit fashion to 

 get it into its narrow house; bnt all the bones, with the exception of the 

 skull, were reduced to a soft paste, or even entirely gone. At Adakh, a 

 fancy prompted me to dig into a small knoll near the ancient shell-heap ; 

 and here we found, in a precisely similar sarcophagus, the remains of a 

 skeleton, of which also only the cranium retained sufficient consistency to 

 admit of preservation. This inclosure, however, was filled with a dense 

 peaty mass not reduced to mold, the result of centuries of sphagnous 

 growth, which had reached a thickness of nearly two feet above the remains. 

 When Ave reflect upon the well-known slowness of this kind of growth in 

 these northern regions, attested by numerous Arctic travelers, the antiquity 

 of the remains becomes evident. A figure of this cranium is appended. 



In both localities, the skulla were much softened and partially deficient, 

 requiring the greatest care to preserve them. One of the Amaknak skulls 

 is now in the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, the others 

 are in the United States Army Medical Museum at Washington. Dr. 

 George A. Otis, U. S. A., curator of this invaluable collection, whose 

 researches into this branch of ethnology are well known, has kindly fui-- 

 nished me with the measurements (made at the museum imder his direction) 

 of nearly all the crania collected by m^'self or by the parties under my 

 charge from 18G5 to 1874 inclusive. These crania now form part of the 

 Army Jledical Museum, and comprise a much larger number of undoubted 

 Aleut crania than exist altogether in all the other museums of the woi'ld. 

 The table comprises measurements of crania dating from the earliest deposits 

 affording such remains, as above, and successively down to those of natives 

 who must have been living about one hundred and fifty years ago. For 

 the use of the four figures of Aleut crania which are here given, I am also 

 indebted to the liberality and courtesy of Di-. Otis. 



I have made use of some measurements of crania, from the northern 

 part of Bering Sea, examined by the late lamented Jeftries Wyman, but 

 which were by accidental circumstances (over which he had no control) 

 erroneously named or taken to be what they were not. In his pamphlet 



