anipulation, Doctor Morton succeeded in reconstructing the posterior
and lateral portions. The occiput is remarkably flat and vertical,
while the lateral or parietal diameter measures no less than five
inches and eight tenths.

A chemical examination of some fragments of the bones proves them to be
almost destitute of animal matter, which, in the perfect osseous
structure, constitutes about thirty-three parts in the hundred.

On the upper part of the left tibia there is a swelling of the bone,
called, in surgical language, a _node_, an inch and a half in length,
and more than half an inch above the natural surface. This morbid
condition may have resulted from a variety of causes, but possesses
greater interest on account of its extreme infrequency among the
primitive Indian population of the country.

On a late visit to Boston I had the satisfaction of examining a small
and extremely interesting collection of mummied bodies in the
possession of Mr. John H. Blake, of that city, dug up by himself from
an ancient cemetery in Peru. This cemetery lies on the shore of the Bay
of Chacota, near Arica, in latitude 18 deg. 20' south. It covers a large
tract of ground. The graves are all of a circular form, from two to
four feet in diameter, and from four to five feet deep. In one of them
Mr. Blake found the mummies of a man, a woman, a child twelve or
fourteen years old, and an infant. They were all closely wrapped in
woollen garments of various colours and degrees of fineness, secured by
needles of thorn thrust through the cloth; The skeletons are saturated
with some bituminous substance, and are all in a remarkable state of
preservation. The woollen cloths, too, are well preserved, which no
doubt is accounted for, in a great degree, by the extreme dryness of
the soil and atmosphere of that part of Peru.

Mr. Blake visited many other cemeteries between the Andes and the
Pacific Ocean as far south as Chili, all of which possess the same
general features with those found in the elevated valleys of the
Peruvian Andes. No record or tradition exists in regard to these
cemeteries, but woollen cloths similar to those found by Mr. Blake are
woven at this day, and probably in the same manner, by the Indians of
Peru; and in the eastern part of Bolivia, to the southward of the place
where these mummies were discovered, he found, on the most barren
portion of the Desert of Atacama, a few Indians, who, probably from the
difficulty of acc