Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/741

Rh anatomy, a science which is as yet very incomplete, but which is rapidly enlarging its boundaries. Some animals we know by their fossil remains, and in these merely their bony structure can be studied; all the soft parts are, of course, lost forever, and can only be approximately restored by our knowledge of allied existing types of the same animals. With these few preliminary remarks I shall proceed to describe, as simply as possible, some anomalies I have myself met with, and the significance of which I shall endeavor to make clear.

—In a skull in my possession, whose lowness of type is manifested by the narrow forehead, prominent supraorbital ridges, wide arches of bone to inclose the large masticatory muscles, the acute facial angle, prognathous jaws, and well-marked bony prominences, are two remarkable variations:

1. An Epihyal Bone.—In all human beings there is near the ear-opening a bony spine, generally about half an inch long, and which is called, from its resemblance to an ancient pen, the styloid process; the lower end of this is connected with the hyoid or tongue bone of the neck by a fibrous cord. Now, in this skull, the styloid process is not connected with the little tongue-bone by a fibrous cord, but the