REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Human Spines.' — The paper is, in the words of the author, “a 
description of forty-five anomalous human spines in the Warren 
Museum,” and of a number of special parts of the spinal column 
from the same collection ; it is also a discussion of the causes of the 
spinal variations. 
The author describes five classes of spinal anomalies, namely : 
1. Spines in which the number of presacrals is normal, but in 
which there is an irregularity at the junction of the thorax and loins, 
or at the junction of the thorax and neck. 
2. Spines in which the 26th is the v. fu/cralis, but in which the 
25th is not quite separated from it. 
3. Spines in which there are more than 24 perfectly free prasa- 
crals, the extra one being thoracic, or lumbar, or there being two 
extra præsacrals, one thoracic and one lumbar, the latter sacralized 
on one side, the 27th being the fu/cralis. 
4. Spines in which one or more praesacral vertebra are imperfectly 
developed, one or more vertebrze being fused, the atlas being fused 
with the occiput, or the 24th being more or less sacralized. 
5. Spines in which there is a presacral too few: a vertebra being 
wanting in the loins, in the back, there being 12 pairs of ribs, the 
first pair being cervical and perfect on one side, the 24th being in 
all the groups the Julcralis. 
There are further described cervical, rudimentary first thoracic, 
bicipital and tricipital ribs ; fusion of atlas and occiput, of atlas and 
axis, axis and third cervical vertebra; a suppression of a cervical 
and an extra half vertebra. 
‘he main facts brought out by the paper are (1) a lack of relation 
between the condition of the spine at one end of the thorax and that 
at the other, and (2) the frequency of “concomitant” variations on 
one or both sides of the spine. 
_ | Dwight, Thomas. Description of the Human Spine, showing Numerical Varia- 
tion, in the Warren Museum of the Harvard Medical School. Memoirs of the 
Boston Society of Natural History, vol. v, No. 7 (Boston, 1901), pp- 237-312» 
with figures. 
397 . 
