76 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



The skull marked Pachacaniae was taken by Commander 

 Palmer from an old Indian " huaca," or burial-place, close to 

 the town of Lurin, seven leagues south of Lima, and not far 

 from the ruins of the old Peruvian temple of Pachacamac — 

 Pachacamac meaning, " He who gives and sustains life," 

 and who was worshipped as the principal deity in Peru be- 

 fore the conquering Incas introduced the worship of the sun. 

 This skull has the characteristics described by Dr J. J. Yon 

 Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, and Signior Eivero, director of 

 the Museum of Lima, as belonging to the so-called extinct 

 race of Aturian Paltas, or Flatheads of South America. 



The remains of this race are found in the neighbourhood 

 of Lake Titicaca, in Peru, and in the interior of Brazil ; and 

 it appears from the statement of Dr Tschudi and Signior 

 Eivero that the flattened form of crania was not, as most 

 naturalists at first thought, the result of artificial pressure, — 

 a practice now resorted to by many of the North American 

 tribes, as the same configuration was found in a foetus which 

 they took from the mummy of a pregnant woman found in 

 a cave at Huichay, in Peru. 



At the meeting of the British Association held at Ply- 

 mouth in 1841, Dr Bellamy first brought into notice the 

 existence of a bone at the posterior part of the skull situated 

 between the two parietal bones, and immediately above the 

 occipital. This communication is published in the 10th 

 vol. of the " Annals and Magazine of Natural History." In 

 the "Peruvian Antiquities," by Dr Tschudi and Signior 

 Eivero, translated by Dr Hawks, at page 38 it is thus alluded 

 to : — " In conclusion, it may be proper to notice an osteologic 

 anomaly, very interesting, which is observed in the crania of 

 all the three races, and it is this, — that those of children of 

 tender years, in the first months after their birth, present an 

 interparietal bone (os interparietale) perfectly distinct ; a bone 

 which, as its name indicates, will be found placed between 

 the two parietals, and having a form more or less triangular, 

 whose sharpest angle is above, and is bounded by the pos- 

 terior edges of the parietal bones, while its base attaches 

 itself to the occipital bone by a suture which runs from the 

 angle of union of the temporal with the occipital bone, a 



