NOTES ON SKELETON FOUND AT CISSBURY. 433 



Cissbury flint-mine-shafts as having belonged to a < woman of about 

 twenty-five years of age, of low stature, 4 feet 9 inches,' and very 

 much the same words might be used for describing the male 

 skeleton now before me. Some little doubt might have arisen as 

 to the question of the sex of this skeleton in the mind of anybody 

 who might have chanced to put his hand upon the long bones of 

 the left arm on first seeing the skeleton. For these bones are dis- 

 proportionately short as compared with ordinary male humeri, 

 radii, and ulnae, as their measurements will show ; and it is only 

 when they are compared with the corresponding bones of the other 

 side of the body, and found to be much shorter than those of 

 ordinary male bones, that we see that this shortness has a patho- 

 logical, not a sexual significance, and is to be explained as having 

 been caused by infantile paralysis which was partially recovered 

 from. There is, however — when we examine the other bones of 

 the skeleton, happily, through Dr. Kelly's help, nearly all available 

 for this purpose — no doubt as to the sex of the owner of this 

 skeleton. As regards the limb bones even of the left arm, their 

 markings for the insertions of muscles are much better defined, and 

 their absolute dimensions are larger than those of the skeleton 

 already described, and the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to all 

 the other bones. The orbital ridges, the mastoid processes, the 

 parietooccipital and the frontal slopes in the cranium, the lower 

 jaw and the pelvis, all alike possess the characters which are held 

 to indicate the male sex. 



I spoke of the age of the Cissbury female as having been ' about 

 twenty-five years,' and I think, as this phrase may be taken to 

 cover the quinquennial period from twenty- five to thirty, it may be 

 considered to have been scientifically as well as otherwise justifiable. 

 It is difficult to pronounce definitely as to whether the male 

 skeleton now before us belonged or did not belong to an older 

 individual than the female already described. In both, the epi- 

 physes of the movable vertebrae have coalesced with the centra, 

 those of the ossa innominata and those of the ribs and clavicles 

 with the rest of those bones, whilst in neither have the first and 

 second sacral vertebrae coalesced, which they usually do about the 

 thirtieth year. On the other hand, the lines of junction of these 

 epiphyses are a little more evident in the male than the female 

 skeleton, and the teeth are not quite so much worn down, so that 



Pf 



