76 Proceedings of the Royal Fhysical Society. 
The skull marked Pachacamac was taken by Commauder 
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 ruius 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. Von 
Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, and Siguier Kivero, director of 
the Museum of Lima, as belonging to the so-called extinct 
race of Aturian Paltas, or Fiatheads 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 
Kivero 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 tlie occipital bone by a suture which runs from the 
angle of union of the temporal with the occipital bone, a 
