REPORT ON THE BONES OF THE HUMAN SKELETON. 
53 
sacrum, it was only to be expected that a platypellic pelvis would have a relatively wide 
sacrum, and that a dolichopellic pelvis would have a relatively narrow sacrum. There are 
three races which have an anomalous position in these two tables, viz., the Chinese, 
the Melanesians, and the Polynesians. The Chinese with a platypellic brim, it will be 
observed, are placed with pelves in which the sacrum is longer than broad. The position, 
however, which the Chinese occupy in Table IX., can only be regarded as provisional, 
and when a larger series is examined, on the basis of only five sacral vertebrae being 
measured, it is not unlikely that their position in the table of sacral proportions will 
have to be altered. The position of the Melanesians and Polynesians in Table VIII. is 
also provisional, as a wider series of observations may require them to be transferred to 
another column in that table. 
In connection with the relative dimensions of the conjugate and transverse diameters 
of the pelvic brim, and those of the length and breadth of the sacrum in the different 
races of men, a few words may appropriately be written on the corresponding relations in 
the pelvis in other mammals, at least in those which possess five vertebrae in the sacrum. 
In the Anthropoid Apes the length of the sacrum is considerably greater than its breadth. 
In two orangs, which I have measured, the mean sacral index was 87 ; in two chim- 
panzees the mean was 77, in a gorilla the index was 72, and in a gibbon 89. In an ox 
the sacral index was 87, and in a camel it was 89. In all these mammals the sacrum is 
hyperdolichohieric. The mean index of the pelvic brim in two chimpanzees was 133, and 
in two orangs 126 ; whilst in a single gorilla the index w\as 144, and in a gibbon 151. 
In an ox the pelvic index was 110, and in a camel it was 110 '8. In these animals the 
conjugate diameter of the pelvic brim was materially greater than the transverse, i.e., 
the index was hyperdolichopellic. When a human pelvis therefore is dolichopellic, and 
also dolichohieric, it corresponds in these characters with the more usual type of 
mammalian pelvis ; and, as compared with the relations of parts met with in the 
Europeans, it possesses a degraded or animalised arrangement. 
In the Australian from Perth the first coccygeal vertebra, and in that from Manly 
Cove the entire coccyx, was fused with the sacrum.^ In the Bush pelvis two coccygeal 
vertebrae were fused with the sacrum, the anterior concavity of which was also slight. 
In the Sikh, one of the female Andaman Islanders, a Sandwich Island woman, the Guanche 
pelves, and the female Laplander, the first coccygeal vertebra was fused with the sacrum. 
In none of the Australian pelves did the sacrum possess more than a slight concavity 
anteriorly. As a rule, indeed, the whole series of sacra belonging to the pelves measured 
in the tables had a gentle anterior concavity, without much depth, but in the male 
Esquimaux the lowest two sacral vertebrae were more abruptly bent forward on the third 
sacral, so that the bone had a deep concavity in front. The change in the direction of 
1 To avoid any misunderstanding as regards my measurements of the length of the sacrum, I wish to state that when 
one or more coccygeal vertebrae were fused with the sacrum they were not included in the length of that bone. 
