Since the advent of the widespread use of the roentgen ray for diagnosis, there has been a great increase in the knowledge of those neoplasms that cause osseous metastases. Carcinomas of the prostate, breast, thyroid and pulmonary bronchus, as well as hypernephromas, have been known to be the most common producers of secondary growths in the skeletal system. Primary carcinomas of other organs do cause metastases in the bones, and these occur with sufficient frequency to make their clinical recognition an important factor in the amelioration of their symptoms. Skeletal metastases occur in 10.5 per cent of rectal carcinomas according to Nisnjewitsch,1 who found them in six of fifty-seven postmortem examinations. The determination of the true percentage of such occurrences is impossible from either a clinical or a pathologic standpoint unless the material is examined carefully with that point in view. Miyauchi2 examined the lumbar vertebrae in thirty-five