IßQ Søren Hansen. 



more in women than in men; its girth is considerably less than 

 that of the chest. The umbilicus is large and ugly, a natural con- 

 sequence of the primitive way in which the navel is severed, it 

 being either cut with a shell or bitten in two by the mother. 



The women's mammae are often rather pointed and begin to 

 droop at an early stage. 



There are no materials for determining the outer form and size 

 of the pelvis; it may, however, be of some interest to give an ac- 

 count of some pelvic bones which the Expedition has brought home. 

 It has not been possible to take measurements of the dimensions of 

 üie pelvis on the basis of these bones, but they present certain 

 osteological peculiarities, one of which is deserving of particular 

 attention. Immediately in front of and under the edge of faciès 

 auricularis there extends over os ilei a slightly curved, flat,' sharp- 

 edged groove, with a smooth but uneven bottom. Its breadth is 

 from 5 to 10 mm, it is about 50 mm in length and tapers off behind 

 in the vicinity of the spina ilei posterior inferior and in front im- 

 mediately under the back end of linea arcuata interna. This groove, 

 which corresponds to the course of the arteria glutæa superior, has 

 been described by Verneau^) under the name of "sillon prèauricu- 

 laire'', and, as far as we know, has hitherto only been found among 

 a few tribes of South American Indians. However, it also occurs 

 frequently in pelvic bones from West Greenland , and thus appears 

 to be a race characteristic of no small importance. 



As to the shape of head of the East Greenlanders there are abund- 

 ance of materials to hand, consisting partly of measurements taken 

 by the Expedition on living persons, and partly of a collection of 

 skulls. As far as the former are concerned, it has proved necessary 

 to discard a large part as useless, not out of distrust of the accur- 

 acy with which the manual work has been performed, but because 

 some of the measurements have been carried out on different prin- 

 ciples and therefore cannot be compared, and because as a general 

 rule it is undesirable to encumber science with a mass of more or 

 less unimportant material, which is bound to crowd out and over- 

 shadow the essentials, or to tempt us to draw conclusions of doubt- 

 ful value. I hope, however, that I shall be able to show all the 

 same that a residue of positive results has been left, even if I do 

 not venture to regard this section as exhaustive. 



The most important race characteristic of the head, its cephalic 

 index, the relation between its greatest breadth and its greatest 

 length, has been determined by measurements taken on 136 individuals 



'j Le bassin duns les se.xes et dans les races. Thèse. Paris 1875. 



