110 LABORATORY MANUAL OF ANTHROPOMETRY 



surface of the pubic arch are in contact with a board placed vertically. 

 From its three contact points it is called the spino-symphysial plane, 

 and because it is defined by three points instead of four it is mathe- 

 matically more precise than is the use of the FH with the skull, which 

 depends upon four. 



When oriented along the spino-symphysial plane the girdle possesses 

 a maximum height, breadth (laterally), and depth (dorso-ventrally) , 

 approximately at right angles to one another, the first three measurements 

 given below. Oriented in this way there are the usual number of normse, 

 as in the skull, which might come into use in making careful drawings or 

 photographs for comparison, these have had little use thus far. 



The anthropological study of the pelvic girdle is one of the oldest sub- 

 divisions of the subject, mainly, perhaps, on account of the early necessity 

 of making measurements of this region in the female on the part of the 

 obstetricians and gynaecologists. These men had thus assembled many 

 data when the modern science came into existence, and all or nearly all 

 of them found at once a place in the rubric of suggested measurements. 

 Thus, in Turner's Report of the bones collected by H. M. S. Challenger 

 (1886), the pelvic girdle, aside from the skull, to which an entrie mono- 

 graph was devoted, has the first and most prominent place. No less 

 that 35 separate data were presented, mostly measurements, with a few 

 indices, and angles, and in this paper the Pelvic brim index (Turner's 

 No. 15), originating from Zaaijer in 1866, was made much use of.* 



I. MEASUREMENTS 



(a) Outside measurement of the pelvic girdle as a whole. 



1. Maximum pelvic height; the greatest distance between the upper 

 edge of the iliac crest and the lowest point of the sciatic tuber (ischiadic 

 tuber osity) of the same side. As the two terminal points are on the 

 same bone, this measurement becomes also the maximum length line 

 of a single os coxae (innominate bone), and as such is employed in cal- 

 culating certain indices, like the Innominate (3), and the Ischiadic (6). 



2. Maximum pelvic breadth (cristal breadth); the greatest distance 

 between the two iliac crests, taken along the outer lips. This and other 

 large pelvic and thoracic measures are taken with the pelvimeter (Pm), 

 a large pair of calipers, with a reach of 600 mm. 



3. Maximum pelvic depth (dorso-ventral,' or sagittal). From the 

 most dorsally projecting point of the sacrum, in the median line, to the 



* An excellent paper to serve as a laboratory manual for the measurement of the 

 pelvis is that of KOGANEI and OSAWA, Das Becken, der Aino und der Japaner, Tokio, 

 1900, in which the authors have made an exhaustive study of the pelvis both in the 

 skeleton and in the living subject, employing a large number of subjects in all cases. 

 Earlier papers of importance, dealing with the racial diffeiences, are TURNER'S Chal- 

 lenger report, referred to above, and HENNIG, Das Rassenbecken, in Archiv f . Anthro- 

 pol., 1885. 



