528 



THE E V'OLITTIOlSr OF THE HITMAN FOOT. 



to be a transition between civilized man and the anthropoid. Reo^ard- 

 ing-.the height there is an interesting fact to which I desire to call 

 special attention, namely, that the height of the heel in Hylobates is 

 very near that of man. This fact, connected with certain others, 

 justifies us in giving special attention to the foot of the gibbon, an 

 animal which in many respects approaches man, and it led Dubois, 

 in his first memoir on Pithecanthropus, to compare the gibbon at once 

 to that ancestor. The gibbon even surpasses in this respect the 

 Veddahs, the negritos, and the negroes, as well as new-born children 

 of our own race. 



Another very important matter to Avhich M. Volkov has directed his 

 attention is the angle of inclination of the calcaneum. This angle of 

 inclination, or rather the position of the calcaneiun relative to the sur- 

 face of the ground, has consideral)h^ influence on the formation of the 



arch, and consequently is 

 contributory to all the 

 variations just mentioned. 

 In the lower apes, as well 

 as in the anthropoids who 

 have no well-marked arch, 

 the calcaneum is placed, 

 as it were, flat on the 

 ground— that is to say, no 

 angle of inclination exists. 

 In the inferior races it is 

 very small, and its mini- 

 mum is reached in the 

 Veddahs {S = 3° — $ = 

 10") and the negroes ( S 

 - 6° ~ 9 —4°). In new- 

 born Europeans it does 

 not exceed 5°; its maximum is attained in adult Europeans in whom 

 it is 14° for the male, 16- for the female. You will understand the 

 great importance of this character; the inclination of the calcaneum 

 is, 1 repeat, one of the principal elements of the plantar arch, the 

 characteristic of the plantigrade, walking foot. Desiring, for clear- 

 ness' sake, to treat, while speaking of the arch, of other characteristics 

 of the calcaneum, 1 will examine onl}" one more interesting feature of 

 this bone, that of the articular facets for the astragalus found on the 

 antero-internal surface. The older anatomists sometimes recognized 

 two of these facets, sometimes one only. In his Traite d'anatomie M. 

 Testnt admits but one, which is sometimes, he says, divided into two 

 by a transverse furrow. 



M. Volkov has sought for the cause of this variation and has tried 

 to determine its ethnic value. Following Camper, who had already 

 remarked that the calcaneum of ncw-l)orn children has always two 



Fig. 8.— Skeleton of the foot (internal lateral hurlace). 

 I, Negro. II, European (to show the angle of inclination 

 of the calcaneum and the longitudinal arch). 



