January ii, 1889.] 



SCIENCE 



29 



on divorces and divorce laws, for which a special appropriation was 

 made by Congress. The records of 2,700 courts have been exam- 

 ined ; and the volume will give, in classified form, the number of 

 divorces, with causes, number of children, when divorced, and other 

 accessible information. The agents of the Department of Labor 

 are now at work on the fifth annual report, which will not be ready 

 for a year yet, on the wages of railroad-men. 



— " Mr. B. F. Stevens, 4 Trafalgar Square, London, has been 

 for some years at work on indexes to the manuscripts relating to 

 American affairs between 1763 and 1783 preserved in European 

 archives. The United States Government urged the purchase of 

 these indexes, and also the obtaining of transcripts of the docu- 

 ments themselves. Congress has, however, made no grant for the 

 purpose, and Mr. Stevens therefore boldly proposes to publish pho- 

 tographic facsimiles of the documents, provided he can obtain a 

 hundred subscribers to begin with. Each document will be ac- 

 companied by a statement of its provenance, and of any variations 

 to be found in other copies, if such exist ; and a translation will be 

 added when the original is not in English. Mr. Stevens calculates 

 that when he has once fairly started he will be able to publish 

 monthly two volumes of some 500 pages each, and he asks $100 

 for every five volumes. A copious index will be published to every 

 twenty-four volumes, and the price of it will be $20. Mr. Stevens 

 thinks that this valuable series of facsimiles will ultimately fill 100 

 -volumes." 



— Columbian University has announced a unique course of lectures 

 for the coming months, on " The Human Emotions from an An- 

 thropological and Psychological Point of View." 



— At the meeting of the Philosophical Society on Jan. 5., obituary 

 notices were made of Peter Parker, E. B. Elliott, F. V. Hayden, 

 Roland D. Irving, Thomas Hampson, and Emil Bessels ; and Mr. 

 Bailey Willis read a paper on " The Mechanism of the Overthrust 

 Fault." 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



* ^^Correspondents are requested to be as driej" as possible. The writer's name is 

 in all cases required as proof of ^ood faith. 



Twenty copies of the number containing his co^nntunication will be furnished 

 free to any correspondent on request. 



Two Discoveries in Human Osteology by the Hemenway 

 Expedition. 



I HAVE the honor of enclosing to you a letter handed me by my 

 friend Professor Edward S. Morse, who deems the matter therein 

 -discussed by Mr. Cushing of such importance as to merit prompt 

 announcement in your journal. 



First, however, I will ask leave to mention briefly another im- 

 portant discovery made during the researches of the Hemenway 

 Expedition in the Salado and Gila valleys in southern Arizona last 

 winter and spring. In the summer of 1887 Mr. Cushing, the di- 

 rector of the expedition, was dangerously ill at Camp Hemenway, 

 -on the site of the prehistoric city of Los Muertos. Through the 

 i:indness of Secretary Endicott and Surgeon J. S. Billings (the di- 

 rector of the Army Medical Museum at Washington), Surgeon 

 Washington Matthews (the curator of the museum and an intimate 

 friend of Mr. Cushing) was ordered to Arizona to his relief and as- 

 sistance. Dr. Matthews, whose arrival at Camp Hemenway was 

 just in time to save Mr. Cushing's life, was so much impressed with 

 the character of the ancient skeletons there exhumed, that, as an 

 anthropologist, he perceived that it would be of immense scientific 

 value to have them preserved in the most careful manner possible. 

 On his return to Washington, he represented the matter to Dr. Bil- 

 lings, who at once detailed Dr. J. L. Wortman, the talented com- 

 parative anatomist of the museum, to assist the expedition in prop- 

 erly exhuming and preserving the skeletons. It is a notable fact, 

 that, with few exceptions, the skeletons in the various museums of 

 the world have been carelessly collected, and are therefore worthless 

 in the study of certain features : therefore the importance of hav- 

 ing this work proceed under the supervision of two such men as 

 Drs. Wortman and ten Kate, the latter the anthropologist of the 

 expedition, may be perceived. Fortunately the expedition had also 

 three or four Mexican workmen of such native intelligence, that, 

 under the training of the two doctors, they became highly expert in 

 the recovery of the skeletons, complete in every detail ; the great 



age of the remains rendering them very fragile, and demanding, 

 therefore, extremely careful manipulation. 



Early in the course of the work. Dr. Wortman observed indica- 

 tions of a remarkable anatomical peculiarity in the remains. Call- 

 ing the attention of Dr. ten Kate to the fact, together the two 

 pursued the investigation of the same, and all subsequent observa- 

 tions thoroughly confirmed their first inference. This fact was, 

 that in this race the hyoid arch, or basi-hyoid, which together with 

 the stylo-hyoid forms the bony structure at the base of the tongue, 

 was not in the adult co-ossified, the three small bones forming the 

 arch remaining free through life ; the only exception being in the 

 case of skeletons bearing marks of bone-disease, exhibited in the co- 

 ossification of various articulations, in which cases the bones of 

 the basi-hyoid were apt to be ankylosed, though occasionally on 

 one side only. The strongest evidence was that exhibited by the 

 skeletons of old persons, which proved no exception to the general 

 rule of this observation. 



This peculiarity was contrary to all the former experience and 

 studies of the two observers, and it indicated the discovery of a pro- 

 nounced racial character ; for, according to what they had hitherto 

 learned concerning this feature, the ankylosis of the basi-hyoid 

 took place either at or before middle life. 



f 



Consulting the literature of the subject, it was found that both 

 the English and French anatomical authorities concurred in this 

 view, while the German authorities held that the several bones of 

 the arch remained free, ankylosis taking place only exceptionally or 

 in extreme age. It was inferred that the German view was either 

 based upon insufficient evidence, the conclusion being drawn per- 

 haps only from the anatomy of young persons, or that the anatomy 

 of the German race differed in this respect from that of the English 

 and French. 



These observations were embodied in a brief preliminary paper 

 by Drs. Wortman and ten Kate, and communicated to the Inter- 

 national Congress of Americanists held in Berlin last October, at 

 which Professor Morse and I had the honor of representing the 

 Hemenway Expedition. The paper was read to the congress by 

 Professor Morse, who illustrated it with blackboard-drawings. 

 The subject occasioned much interest, for it was felt that it would 

 prove to be of extreme importance should it turn out to be a pe- 

 culiar feature of the aboriginal race of the American continent, as 

 was indicated. Subsequent examinations of a large number of 

 skeletons exhumed from ancient ruins during the excavations of 

 the Hemenway Expedition at Zuili, where it is now at work, have 

 uniformly supported this view ; and while we were in Berlin a Pe- 



