790 EEPORT— 1897. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 20. 

 The President's Address was delivered. — See p. 768. 



The following Papers and Reports were read : — 



1 . A Demonstration of the Utilit}/ of the Sjnnal Curves in Man. 

 By Professor Anderson Stuart. 



2. The Cause of Brachycephaly. By Professor A. Macalister, F.B.S. 



Notes on the Brains of some Australian Natives, 

 By Professor A. Macalister. 



On some Cases of Trepanning in Early American Skulls. 

 By Dr. W. J. McGee. 



5. A Case of Trepanning in North- Western Mexico. 

 By W. Carl Lumholtz and Dr. A. Hrdlicka. 



The trepanned skull ' was found in a burial cave known to the Tarahumare 

 Indians of the Pino Gordo section of the Sierra Madre, about one and a half days 

 north of Guadalupe y Calvo. Three skeletons were found, lying in Tarahumare 

 fashion, on their backs, with the faces to the east, and accompanied by a few crude 

 native clay vessels. The trepanned skull is that of an aged female, a little more 

 massive than the native average, to all appearance not pre-Columbian, but at the 

 same time not recent, for a spindle wheel found with it is not of recent type The 

 skull presents no deformity or fracture, but signs of an old superficial injury at 

 about the middle of the junction of the right parietal with the occipital. 



The opening in the skull lies in the anterior and superior part of the right 

 parietal bone, 1'3 cm. behind the coronal and 2'3 cm. below the sagittal suture. 

 It is almost exactly round, measuring 2 cm. in diameter : the outer edge is smooth 

 and somewhat sunken, the inner obscured by a lamella of thin bone from all parts 

 of the inner edge to the centre, and whose free edge is very sharp and irregular. 

 Seen from within this skull the lamella appears smooth and directly continuous with 

 the inner skull surface. There seems no doubt that part, at least, of this lamella 

 remained after the wound had been made. 



The walls of the opening are quite smooth, and covered with a compact bony 

 tissue. This fact, in connection with the smooth and slightly sunken external 

 edge, shows that the wound had been made a long time — several years before the 

 death of the person. 



The almost circular form of the opening and its perpendicular walls, which 

 show no signs of bevelling, do not admit of the supposition that it was produced 

 by scraping. One is forced to believe that it was produced by a kind of flint 

 wimble with three teeth, very much like the instruments of iron used to-day in 

 trepanning by the Berbers of I'Aur^s." At present the Tarahumares have no 

 such tool, and, moreover, no knowledge of the operation of trepanning. 



Note. — Since the above was read another instance of trepanning in the same 



^ Am. Mils. Nat. Hist. (New York), Lumholtz Coll., No. f|. 



- Drs. Malbot and Verneau, ' Les Chaouias et la trepanation du cr^ne dans 

 I'Aures,' Revue d'Anthropologie, 1897, ii. figs. 1-3. 



