188 MR WM. TURNER ON VARIABILITY IN HUMAN STRUCTURE. 



writers, are so great as to constitute an actual specific distinction between them. 

 But those who have advanced and supported this view seem to me to have 

 ignored, or at least not to have taken sufficiently into consideration the fact, that 

 in the white races themselves, nay, as we have shown in this paper, in a limited 

 section of them even, variations occur in the arrangement of certain of the soft 

 parts so great as to permit of the office usually performed by one muscle to be, in 

 a great measure, or even altogether, exercised by another. But the extent of 

 variation which the white races may exhibit is by no means exhausted by what we 

 have detailed in this communication. Numerous isolated examples of variations, 

 both in the muscular and other systems, have been recorded elsewhere by my- 

 self and other anatomists, and additional observations in the same profitable field 

 of inquiry will, I have no doubt, add many other forms to our already extensive 

 list. Until, however, the deviations from the usually described arrangements in 

 the fair races are more systematically inquired into than has hitherto been the 

 case, we cannot hope to reach an accurate conception of the latitude which may 

 be allowed them. 



Of the extent of the structural variability which may exist in the soft parts 

 of the dark races, we as yet know but little. It is seldom that their bodies have 

 been critically examined ; and of many of the coloured races, indeed, the number 

 of dissections has been too small to permit of any satisfactory conclusions to be 

 arrived at, for opportunities of making the necessary observations seldom fall in 

 the way of the European anatomist. His dissections are made and his descrip- 

 tions are based on the examination of the inhabitants of his own continent. Our 

 knowledge of the comparative anatomy of the soft parts of the races of men is 

 still in its infancy. To make good, indeed, the proposition that the negro is speci- 

 fically distinct from the white man, it would be necessary to show that any 

 peculiarities of arrangement which may be exhibited in the construction of his 

 body, are either constant, or, if variable, that the variations are not in accordance 

 with those which have been or may be met with in similar parts in the bodies of 

 men of the fair races. For until we have determined not only the amount of 

 structural variability in the different races, but the comparative frequency of 

 occurrence of its principal forms, we shall not be in a position even to discuss 

 the question of specific difference on anything like positive scientific data, still 

 less to pronounce dogmatically on the subject. 



From the special difficulties which surround the study of human anatomy, 

 it will not be an easy matter to determine with precision the laws which regulate 

 the development of these structural variations. In some cases, indeed, it would 

 appear that a variation in one structure is not unfrequently correlated with 

 variations in adjacent parts. Thus in the four specimens described in the early 

 part of this communication in which, in conjunction with a supra-condyloid pro- 

 cess, a foramen existed above the inner condyle of the humerus, the median nerve 



