6 Disadvantages of the Upright Position. [January, 
ined that an animal or race of men which had the longest main- 
tained the erect position would have straighter abdomens, widely 
flared pelvic brims with contracted pelvic outlets, and that the 
weight of the spinal column would carry the sacrum lower down, 
and in general terms we find this to be the case. In quadrupeds — 
the box-shaped pelvis, which admits of easy parturition, prevails, 
but where the position of the animal is such as to throw the 
weight of the viscera into the pelvis, the brim necessarily widens, 
these weighty organs sink lower, and the heads of the femora, — | 
acting as fulcra, admit of the crest of the ilium being carried out- 
ward, while the lower part of the pelvis must be contracted. 
This box shape exists in the child’s innominate bones, while its 
protruding abdomen resembles that of the gorilla’) The gibbon — 
exhibits this iliac expansion through the sitting posture, which 
developed his ischial callosities. Similarly iliac expansion occurs 
in the chimpanzee. The Megatherium had wide iliacal expan- 
sion, due to its semi-erect habits, but as its weight was mainly _ 
supported by the huge tail with femora resting in acetabula placed 
far forwards, the leverage necessary to contract the lower pelvis 
is absent. Professor Weber, of Bonn, noted by Carl Vogt, “ Vor- — 
lesungen über den Menschen,” etc., distinguished four chief forms _ 
of the pelvis in man: the oval, round, square and cuneiform, — 
owned in order by Europeans, native Americans, Mongols and — 
black races. Resting upon its own merits as an osseous mechani- | 
cal proposition, it would seem that the older the race the lower ; 
the sacrum and the greater the tendency to approximate the — 
larger transverse diameter of the European female. The antero- 
posterior diameter of the simian pelvis is usually greater than the 
transverse; a similar condition affords the cuneiform, from which 
could be inferred that the erect position in the negro races had 
not been so long maintained as by the Mongols, whose pelvis as- a 
sumed the quadrilateral shape owing to persistence of spinal 
axis weight through greater time; this pressure has finally culmi- 
nated in pressing the sacrum of the European nearer the pubes, 
with consequent lateral expansion at the expense of the antero- 3 
posterior or conjugate. From Marsupialia to Lemurida the box — 
shape pelvis persists, but with the wedge shape induced in man @ ; 
remarkable phenomenon also occurs in the increased size of the 
foetal head in disproportion to the contraction of the pelvic out- l 
let: While the marsupial head is about one-sixth the size of the 
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