80 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



sutures were visible, but only one showed signs of a wor- 

 mian bone at all. The so-called interparietal bone, repre- 

 sented as characteristic of all the skulls of the Peruvian 

 Indian race, is not even traceable in any one of the five 

 skulls in the Lima Museum. A skull from the ruins of 

 Pachacamac, deposited by Dr Smith in the Edinburgh 

 Museum of Natural History in the time of Professor Edward 

 Forbes, " has no such peculiarity ; neither have two skulls 

 from the Chinchas, in the possession of Professor Simpson, 

 the osteological character in question, and therefore/' adds 

 Dr Smith, " none such can be said to be typical of the Peru- 

 vians as a race/' Dr Smith says, since writing the above, 

 he had been introduced to Dr Charles Scherza of the Imperial 

 Austrian frigate ' Novara.' Dr Smith directed his attention 

 to Dr Tschudi's statement, and on his return from the ancient 

 temple of Pachacamac, where he excavated skulls from the 

 tombs, he assured Dr Smith that he inspected at least fifty 

 crania, and that none of them presented the characteristic 

 of a supraoccipital or interparietal wormian bone. 



He had six fine specimens to speak for the Inca race in 

 Europe. 



In reference to certain preliminary inquiries into the 

 present state of our knowledge on craniology and its appli- 

 cation to ethnological questions, I had occasion some time 

 ago to make frequent visits to the fine and well-arranged 

 collection of skulls contained in the Edinburgh Phreno- 

 logical Museum. I then took the opportunity of examining 

 the extent and variety of ossa tvormiana, as exhibited in the 

 different forms of skull, in that readily accessible and valu- 

 able collection. Eor the present I shall briefly state the 

 result of the examination of the crania from South America 

 contained in the museum. Besides a considerable number 

 of casts, there are twelve skulls marked South American, 

 seven of which present no appearance of ossa wormiana. 

 Five of the skulls possess wormian bones more or less de- 

 veloped ; but only two, those marked 297 and 301, have the 

 wormian bones situated at the occipital spine in the line of 

 the lambdoidal suture. In the specimen marked 297, the 

 facial bones are awanting. There is a wormian bone about 



