ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 47 



can be made to accompany and reinforce it. He thought that the 

 efforts in question were useful only in furnishing high ideals, and 

 keeping them before the minds of men. 



Mr. Ward inquired whether there was any evidence of nominal 

 subordination of the virtual to the regular chief, analogous to that 

 which exists in many countries where the Prime Minister is the 

 virtual ruler, and the hereditary king or queen a mere figure-head. 



Major Powell replied that such evidence existed, and gave an illus- 

 tration in support of that view. 



Dr. Fletcher commenced to read a paper entitled Cranial 

 Amulets and Prehistoric Trephining, 1 which was continued to 

 the next meeting. 



Thirty-Eighth Regular Meeting, April 19, 1881. 



Dr. Robert Fletcher concluded the reading of his paper en- 

 entitled Cranial Amulets and Prehistoric Trephining, of which 

 the following is an abstract : 



The first communication upon the subject of cranial amulets was 

 made by Prunieres to the French Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, at their meeting held at Lyons, in 1873. He presented 

 what he termed a "rondelle," discovered in the interior of a skull 

 in one of the dolmens of La Lozere. A large portion of the skull 

 had been removed, apparently by some rude instrument. Other 

 discoveries of a similar character continued to be made, and it was 

 for some time supposed by Prunieres that the condition of the frag- 

 ments resulted from attempts to make drinking cups of the skulls. 

 When they were submitted to Broca for examination, he at once 

 asserted that certain parts of the edges of the rondelles and of the 

 apertures in the crania gave evidence of reparative process, and 

 that an operation, resembling that known to us as trephining, must 



1 Will appear in full in " Contributions to North American Ethnology," vol. V, 

 pp. 1—32, with plates. 



