THE DESCENT OB ORIGIN OF MAN 41 



now sliown tliat this peculiarity is sometimes inherited, as it 

 has occurred in a father, and in no less than four out of his 

 seven children. When present, the great nerve invariably 

 passes through it; and this clearly indicates that it is the 

 homologue and rudiment of the supra-condyloid foramen 

 of the lower animals. Prof. Turner estimates, as he informs 

 me, that it occurs in about one per^cent of recent skeletons. 

 But if the occasional development of this structure in man 

 is, as seems probahle, due to reversion, it is a return to a 

 very ancient state of things, because in the higher Quadru- 

 mana it is absent. 



There is another foramen or perforation in the humerus, 

 occasionally present in man, which may be called the inter- 

 condyloid. This occurs, but not constantly, in various an- 

 thropoid and other apes, °° and likewise in many of the lower 

 animals. It is remarkable that this perforation seems to 

 have been present in man much more frequently during 

 ancient times than recently. Mr. Busk" has collected the 

 following evidence on this head: Prof. Broca "noticed the 

 perforation in four and a half per cent of the arm-bones 

 collected in the 'CimetiSre du Sud, ' at Paris; and in the 

 Grotto of Orrony, the contents of which are referred to 

 the Bronze period, as many as eight humeri out of thirty- 

 two were perforated; but this extraordinary proportion, he 

 thinks, might be due to the cavern having been a sort of 

 'family vault.' Again, M. Dupont found thirty per cent 

 of perforated bones in the caves of the Valley of the Lesse, 

 belonging to tlie Eeindeer period; while M. Leguay, in a 

 sort of dolmen at Argenteuil, observed twenty-five per cent 

 to be perforated; and M. Pruner-Bey found twenty-six per 



structure in man; see his "Great Artists and Anatonaists, " p. 63. See also an 

 important memoir on this process l?y Dr. Gruber, in the "Bulletin de I'Acad. 

 Imp. de St. Petersburg," tom. xii., 1861, p. 448. 



" Mr. St. George Mivart, "Transact. PhU. Soc," 1861, p. 310. 



" "On the Caves of Gibraltar," "Transact. Internat. Congress of Prehist. 

 Arch." Third Session, 1869, p. 159. Prof. Wyman has lately shown (Fourth 

 Annual Report, Peabody Museum, 1871, p. 20) that this perforation is present 

 in thirty-one per cent of some human remains from ancient mounds in the West- 

 ern TJnited States, and in Florida It frequently occurs in the negro. 



