Einknickung der nach Herrn G. H. Meyer 'plastisch' aufwärts gebogenen hinteren Scheitelbeinränder." This opinion of Ranke calls for a few words about the incomplete horizontal parietal sutures. These sutures are apparently very rare in human adults, only five instances being on record (4 Ranke's, 1 Turner's). They are more frequent in orangs (Ranke), and quite common (as Ranke shows, and as I found independently before Ranke's publication of his observations) in the human embryos near term and in new-born or very young infants. In the human family, these partial divisions of the parietal generally begin in the posterior part, and run sagittally to the posterior border of the bone, ending in this border at or near its middle. In orangs the incomplete horizontal divisions seem to begin, as a rule, in the anterior part, and end at or near the middle of the anterior border of the parietal. The length of these divisions varies from a few millimetres to several centimetres, and they even reach up to the centre of the parietal bone.[11] These divisions are, without doubt, the remains of the original anterior and posterior clefts, or, if we go a step further, of the original intervening antero-posterior space between the original inferior and superior segments of the parietal. From the very first contact of the growing centres, the median extremity of these clefts is bounded both below and above by a mass of bone; and when the anterior or posterior border of the parietal comes finally in contact with the frontal or occipital bone, the anterior and posterior sagittal clefts, if they still exist, lie between two well-developed, firm portions of the bone. Under these circumstances it is quite impossible to imagine any disturbance, mechanical or pathological, that could affect solely or mainly the median portion of the cleft, and cause a deflection downward in this portion of the division, or cause its extension to the inferior border or even the anterior-inferior angle of the parietal. There are only two factors that can possibly affect and modify the course of the incomplete parietal suture, and both of these would show their influence mainly or entirely on the distal portion of the same. These two factors are, first, an abnormal development, either defective or excessive, of one of the original parietal segments; and, secondly, influences that would interfere with the freedom of full growth of the anterior or posterior border of the parietal. In the first case, as can easily be imagined or even artificially demonstrated, there would be possible only a lower or higher situation or an obliquity affecting mostly the marginal portion of the division. The results would be low or high sagittal sutures, and curved or oblique sutures diverging from the parietal eminence,--effects entirely different from the actually observed oblique sutures that sever the lower portion of the parietal, or its mastoid angle.