A case less open to the objection of negative evidence, however, is that afforded by the Tetrabranchiate Cephalopoda, the forms of the shells and of the septal sutures exhibiting a certain increase of complexity in the newer genera.

Sutures of the Skull.

When united these serrated edges look almost as if sewed together; hence their name, sutures.

Thus, the bones of the skull are dovetailed by joints called sutures, which are immovable.

We have seen how the bones of the cranium are united by sutures in a manner the better to allow the delicate brain to grow, and to afford it protection from violence.

They point to the jagged edges in the sutures of the skull-bones as evidence of this writing; and the purport of it, they say, depends on his previous life and actions.

One cavern at Lauang, however, is famous over the whole country on account of the gigantic, flat, compressed skulls, without sutures, which have been found in it.

It is, as the traveler reports, celebrated in the locality "on account of its depressed gigantic crania, without sutures."

The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals.

The sutures in the skulls of young mammals have been advanced as a beautiful adaptation for aiding parturition, and no doubt they facilitate or may be indispensable for this act; but as sutures occur in the skulls of young birds and reptiles, which have only to escape from a broken egg, we may infer that this structure has arisen from the laws of growth, and has been taken advantage of in the parturition of the higher animals.

If the spirit can escape from the body through the sutures of the skull instead of by any of the other orifices, it is believed to find a more direct route to heaven, so the purpose of this ceremony may be to facilitate its exit that way.

Arch across the skull of a rounded, flattened curve, with a depression up the centre of the forehead from the medium line between the eyes, to half way up the sagittal suture.

With the wound once dry and clean, it is well to insert three or four silk sutures, but care must be taken not to draw them too tightly.

At the end of a week the sutures may be removed, and the animal turned into a loose box or out to pasture.

It is that when this flap is again placed into position (as later it will have to be) we have round its circumference a rim of soft structures into which to place the sutures.

Bayer, however, again prefers a dressing of the wound, and especially the moistening of the line of sutures with the 1 in 5 solution of iodoform in ether.

The sutures of the cranium indicated the subject to have been 25 or 28 years of age, and its top rested about 12 inches below the mark of the plow.

It was of a man in the prime of life, with the sutures scarcely closed, and only two teeth lacking, and none unsound, and I sent it on to the great craniologist, who replied with warm thanks.

The great world-good must come out of America, for its bones still bend, its sutures are not closed....

And about the ruins industrious research discovered the metal rings and charred coverings of two linen buttons, three shanked buttons entire, and one of that metallic sort which is used in the less conspicuous sutures of the human Oeconomy.

Shell depressed, conical, pale reddish, ornamented with rows of white and brown spots, spirally grooved, ribs slightly granulated; the sutures distinct, impressed, the lower part of the last whorl nearly smooth, the umbilicus white, smooth inside, the edge furnished with a series of granules.

Lamarck never having seen this shell has described it on the authority of Chemnitz, whose figure agrees very well with the shell before me; excepting that the spots round the suture form nearly a continual band at a little distance from it; the outer lip is smooth and thin; the inside dull livid brown; the axis is fourteen-twelfths, the diameter seven-twelfths, of an inch.

The shell ovate, white, with numerous dark-brown irregular concentric lines, smooth except near the suture where it is slightly wrinkled; whorls six, rather convex; aperture ovate, about half as long as the shell; peristome thin (perhaps not formed); perforation covered with a white even lip, surrounded by a dark edge; the throat chocolate-brown.

Shell orbicular, nearly trochi-form, white with two pale-brown bands on each whorl; the one near the suture narrow, and the other, placed on the middle of the whorl, broad; whorls five; convex rounded, with numerous close concentric furrows; axis umbilicated; umbilicus rather narrow, deep; aperture rather more than one half the length of the shell; peristome (not formed ?) simple. 99.

The sutures in her temples were parted.