208 BIMANA. 



According to the same writer, the pelvis of the Javanese is remarkable 

 for its smallness, its lightness, and the circular form of the opening of its 

 upper cavity. 



According to Professor Weber, the variations of the human pelvis 

 resolve themselves into four forms ; and he contends that examples of each 

 occur in all races of mankind, no particular figure being the exclusive 

 or permanent characteristic of any given race : in fact, that every form of 

 the pelvis which deviates from the ordinary type, in whatever race it may 

 occur, finds its analogues in other races of mankind. The four varieties 

 of the pelvis, according to the extensive researches of this anatomist, are 

 the oval, the round, the square, and the oblong ; and of each of these he 

 gives European examples, as well as examples occurring among the 

 Botocudo Indians, the Negroes, the Caffres, and the Javanese. Still, 

 according to his researches, it would seem that the form, most fre- 

 quently occurring among Europeans, is the oval ; among the American 

 nations, the round ; among the Mongolians and kindred tribes, the 

 square ; and, among the races of Africa, the oblong. Admitting, as is 

 doubtless the case, that the pelvis, as well as the cranium, varies among 

 different nations, yet, even in the form farthest removed from that of 

 the European type, the genuine characters of the human pelvis are found ; 

 viz, those connected with the support of the trunk in the erect atti- 

 tude, with the direction of the thigh bones, and with the volume of the 

 glutsei muscles. In short, the pelvis of the human race, like the skull, 

 is removed by a wide interval from that of the most anthropomorphous of 

 the Simiae ; and the Simiae, in the form of this part, are far nearer to 

 the Carnivora than they are to the human species. A comparison of the 

 lower limbs, among the various races of mankind, might be here followed 

 out, for these also exhibit slight differential peculiarities ; but it is 

 useless to proceed farther. The question recurs is the naturalist, upon 

 the acknowledged distinctions between Man and the Simiae, justified 

 in regarding the human being as the type of a distinct order? If 

 Man be the only being endowed with mind, the only being capable 

 of examining his own formation, and that of other animals, the only 

 being to whose intellect the paths of science are open, to whom alone 

 it belongs to learn and practise arts,* and, from an investigation of the 



* " We ought to define the hand as belonging exlusively to Man ; corresponding, in sensibility and 

 motion, with that ingenuity, which converts the being who is weakest in natural defence, to the ruler 

 over animate and inanimate nature. The armed extremities of a variety of animals give them great 

 advantages ; but if Man possessed any similar provision, he would forfeit his sovereignty over all. As 

 Galen long since observed, did Man possess the natural armour of the brutes, he would no longer work 

 as an artificer, nor protect himself with a breastplate, nor fashion a sword or spear, nor invent a 

 bridle to mount the horse and hunt the lion : neither could he follow the arts of peace, construct the 

 pipe and lyre, erect houses, place altars, inscribe laws, and, through letters and the ingenuity of the 

 hand, hold communion with the wisdom of antiquity, and, at one time, converse with Plato, at another 

 with Aristotle or Hippocrates." Bell, on the Hand, p. 1 7. 



