AMERICAN ZOOLOGISTS AND EVOLUTION. 499 



tomorpliidce, and second, that this reversion is principally seen among 

 Esquimaux and the Slavic, French and American branches of the 

 European race."' 



In another paper by the same author* on the "Developmental 

 Significance of Human Physiognomy," he compares the proportions 

 of the body and the facial peculiarities of man with the higher apes 

 and human infants, and shows that the Indo-European, on the whole, 

 stands higher than the other races in the acceleration of those parts by 

 which the body is maintained in an erect position, and in the want of 

 prominence of the jaws and cheek-bones, which are associated with a 

 greater predominance of the cerebral part of the skull and conse- 

 quently greater intellectual power. 



Dr. Harrison Allen, f in a study of the shape of the hind-limb as 

 modified by the weight of the trunk, dwells on the manner of articu- 

 lation in the gorilla of the fibula with both calcaneum and the astrag- 

 alus, as well as the fact that the astragalus in that genus possessed a 

 broad, deflected fibula facet, and says : " This peculiar projection is 

 rudimental in the astragalus of civilized man, but was found highly 

 developed in an astragalus from an Indian grave found at Cooper's 

 Point, New Jersey." 



In my Buffalo address, I alluded to a paper by Professor N. S. Sha- 

 ler on the intense selective action which must have taken place in the 

 shape and character of the pelvis in man on his assumption of the 

 erect posture — the caudal vertebrae turning inward, the lower portion 

 of the pelvis drawing together to hold the viscera, which had before 

 rested on the elastic abdominal walls, the attending difficulty of 

 parturition, etc. Dr. S. V. Clevenger J has since called attention to 

 other inconveniences resulting from man's escape from his quadru- 

 manous ancestors. In a paper entitled " Disadvantages of the Up- 

 right Position," he dwells particularly on the valves in the veins to 

 assist the return of blood to the heart, which, considered from the 

 usual teleological point of view, seems right enough ; but why, he 

 asks, should man have valves in the intercostal veins ? He shows that 

 in a recumbent position these valves are an actual detriment to the 

 flow of blood : "An apparent anomaly exists in the absence of valves 

 from parts where they are most needed, such as the vena? cavsc, spinal, 

 iliac, hsemorrhoidal, and portal. The azygos veins have important 

 valves. Place man upon 'all -fours,' and the law governing the 

 presence and absence of valves is at once apparent, applicable, so far 

 as I have been able to ascertain, to all quadrupedal and quadrumanous 

 animals. Dorsad veins are valved ; cephalad, ventrad, and eaudad 

 veins have no valves." By means of two simple diagrams he shows 

 clearly the distribution of valved and unvalved veins as they exist in 



* " American Naturalist," vol. xvii, p. 618. 



f "Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences," 1SS5, p. 383. 



X " American Naturalist," vol. xviii, p. 1. 



