opinion of Mr. Charlesworth, that we should be most careful how w take a step in advance of our present position. A letter was read from Professor MARSHALL, requesting that his paper on "Cases of Microcephaly," which was to have been read at this meeting of the Society, might be postponed till the next meeting This MR. C. C. BLAKE proceeded to make some observations on a skull, the property of His ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES, exhibited to the Society, with his royal highness's permis sion, by Mr. B. Leadbeater, F.L.S., F.Z.S. The skull presented the peculiar characteristic of having an interparietal bone. character, the "os Inca," was first observed by Dr. Bellamy in the skulls of the early Peruvians. Professor Tschudi considered it as a mark of the primeval distinction of the Peruvian race, the skulls of which, according to him, manifested this alleged "embryonic character" as in the lower mammalia. Morton observed it in a Chimu (called by him Chimuyan), and in a Cayuga skull. In the British Museum is a large handsome skull, belonging to the "Chincha" type, in which the interparietal bone is manifest. In Mr. Edward Gerrard's most useful and valuable catalogue the locality is marked as from Pasadama (i.e. Pachacamac), near Lima. In the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons, on No. 5711 (a) Laplander), Professor Owen remarks, "The suture between the exoccipital and supraoccipital is retained on the right side, and partially so on the left." Here, however, there are numerous Wormian bones in the lambdoidal suture. On No. 5390 (a New Zealander), he says, "The upper half of the supraoccipital has been developed as an interparietal from a separate centre, and has united by a complex dentated suture with the lower half of the supraoccipital." A similar conformation exists in a skull from the Roman burial-place at Felixstow, preserved in the Anatomical Museum at Cambridge, and in the cranium of a Bengalee. The law which regu lates the repetition of similar characters in skulls of nations aboriginally distinct is termed by Professor J. Aitken Meigs, of Philadelphia, "homoiokephalic representation." Analogous congenital varieties or imperfections may be seen in almost every ethnic type. Dr. Williamson has described them in the Albanian, Singhalese, Timmani, Kosso, Krooman, Fanti, Ashantee, Calabar, Burmese (Malay), and Esquimaux; whilst in the Limbu tribe from Nepâl an instance has been described by Professor Owen, in which the "interparietal" is divided into three distinct quasi-symmetrical portions. Dr. Spencer Cobbold has seen a true interparietal bone in a skull in the Edinburgh | Museum. DR. THURNAM remarked on the peculiar shape of the interparietal bone in this specimen, as there was synostosis between the interparietal and the parietal. Instances of true interparietal bones were not so uncommon as had been considered. The PRESIDENT adjourned the session of the Society till November. |