78 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



occipital bone, and well indicated by a furrow very clearly 

 marked." If this statement be correct, the tribe whose 

 crania were disinterred about the neighbourhood of Lake 

 Titicaca are not singular in respect to this formation of the 

 skull, as all the ancient Peruvians are said to have possessed 

 it. The statements of Drs Bellamy, Tschudi, and Signior 

 Kivero are thus alluded to by Colonel Hamilton Smith, in 

 his " Natural History of the Human Species," who says, — 

 " If the typical Flatheads were not a distinct species of 

 man, they were, at least, the oldest and first wanderers that 

 reached the American continent ;" and adds in a note, that 

 t{ Eecent investigations, conducted by Sir Kobert Schom- 

 burgk, show the Maopityan, or Frog Indian tribe, at the 

 sources of the Corentyn, to be naturally flatheaded. Dr Lund 

 states that he found some skulls in the interior of Brazil in 

 a fossilised state, corresponding to those discovered near the 

 Lake Titicaca. They were in limestone crevices, and mixed 

 with the bones of different species of extinct animals, 

 " proving," as Colonel H. Smith remarks, " both the remote 

 age when this form of man already existed in America, and 

 the extent of surface it is now known to have occupied." 



The skull in my possession appears to have belonged to 

 a young person, the sutures being open and distinct, and 

 only fourteen teeth being present in the upper jaw. The 

 ossa wormiana extend in the line of the lambdoidal suture, 

 from an inch above the posterior inferior angle of the pa- 

 rietal bone, and are nearly an inch in breadth. The skull 

 belongs to the brachycephalic type, and is somewhat prog- 

 nathous. The occipitofrontal diameter is inches, the 

 interparietal diameter is 5£ inches, and the vertical height, 

 measured from the middle of the sagittal suture interiorly 

 to the anterior edge of the occipital foramen, is about 3 

 inches. The horizontal circumference of the skull, ex- 

 tending from the glabella along the upper margin of the 

 squamous suture and over the occipital protuberance, is 19£ 

 inches. The skull, without the lower jaw, weighs 2l£ 

 ounces ; the cranial cavity is capable of containing 36£ 

 ounces of millet seed, the anterior portion 10£ ounces, and 

 the posterior 26 ounces, which is nearly in the ratio of one 



