574 
Miscellanea 
French, I feel convinced that if Dr Parsons could measure 277 femoral heads where the femoral 
length was measurable, he could easily have measured 2000 heads in all and thus have ascer- 
tained, definitely, whether his Kothwell series is unique in showing a significant depression in 
frequency between 45 and 47 mm. Further he could on such material by dealing with numbers 
8 to 10 times those he has provided have given definite answers to many of the problems con- 
cerning jilatymery and the pilastric and popliteal indices, which other observers have been vainly 
trying to solve on far less adequate and in many cases far more fragmentary material. 
I would note that Dr Parsons gives no reply at all to my question of why he used Dwight's 
measurements as a criterion of sex when they referred to bones with the cartilages attached, 
because without this reply his careful attention to ' other points ' when the head fell between 
45 and 47 mm. seems one-sided, and of no value in sexing the collection as a whole. He 
further gives no reply whatever to my question of why it is the male end, not the dwarf end, 
of his female distribution which is lacking, if absence of females be due to breakage. 
I would also state (i) that I have not sexed the Roth well bones and therefore cannot say how 
far I should or should not agree with Dr Parsons. Dr Lee using the best available mathematical 
process found 145 5 s and 133 ^ s, while Dr Parsons has 103 $ s and 174 (J s. How this shows any 
agreement I fail to perceive ; (ii) that I have made no assertion about the bones being of the 
13th and 14th centuries. I merely headed my letter with Dr Parsons' heading " Measurements 
of Medieval English Femora," and asked why, if Dr Parsons holds these bones to be such, he 
considers them without cartilages comparable with the mixed results of a modern American 
dissecting room plus the cartilages. 
K. P. 
CAMBRIDGE : PBINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
