48 
toner's address. 
much more infrequent than in the European races, or 
in the white stock of mixed blood in this country. 
The ossa triquetra or Wormian bones are more fre- 
quently met with. The cranial capacity seems less, the 
supraorbital ridges are more strongly defined, and the 
facial angle is small and ape-like. The tibia is almost 
always bowed forward and notably flattened and 
sharpened — a condition uniformly present, which has 
been called platycnemism. The pelvis is less dished 
or curved, and the sacral and coccygeal bones are 
more nearly vertical. The sigmoid fossa of the hu- 
merus is nearly always perforated, and the sesamoid 
bones are more numerous. Artificial deformities of 
the skull, generally with asymmetrical portions or 
flattening, is common in crania taken from tumuli in 
Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi."^ 
It has been stated by Morton and others that the 
common wants of human beings in no wise related 
lead them under similar circumstances to adopt very 
much the same habits of life and means for obtaining 
food and securing shelter. If this hypothesis be cor- 
rect, it is less surprising that the savage races living 
■'^ Those interested in the subject would do well to consult Dr. 
Hermann Welcker's " Researches on the Growth and Structure of 
the Human Crania," and a paper announced before the Philosophical 
Society of Washington on the persistenc oi the frontal suture ob- 
served in the crania of adult Mound-Builders, also chapter VHI. 
on the Crania of the Mound-Builders, in J. W. Foster's "Prehistoric 
Races of the United States " and ''A Study of the Skulls and Long 
Bones found in Mounds" with a table of measurements, by R. J. Far- 
quharson, M. D., in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion for 1874, p. 361 ; also the opinion of Prof. Jeffreys Wyman, in 
the Fourth Annual Report of the Peabody Institute for 1871, Peschel's 
Races of Men and other works. 
