80 Proceedings of the Eoyal Fhysical Society. 
sutures were visible, but only oue 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 oiossa ivormiana^ as exhibited in the 
different forms of skull, in that readily accessible and valu- 
able collection. For 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 
