118 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
the skeletal characters of the natives of India, but I should like to bring into the compass 
of a single paragraph the main features of the skeletons of the Sikh and the tall Hindoo. In 
both, the index of the pelvic brim was on the verge between platypellic and mesatipellic, and 
the sacrum was platyhieric. In both, the vertical diameter of the bodies of the lumbar 
vertebrae was greater behind than in front. In both, the scapular index was between 
68 and 69. In both, the radio-humeral index was mesatikerkic. In the Hindoo the 
relative length of the tibia to the femur was somewhat greater than in the Sikh. In the 
femoro-humeral and intermembral indices they were almost identical. As regards their 
craniological characters they were both hyper-dolichocephalic, C.I. 66"5 for the Hindoo, 
6 5 '8 for the Sikh. In both, the vertical diameter exceeded the transverse breadth, the 
vertical index being 68 "6 for the Hindoo, 71 for the Sikh. Both were distinctly ortho- 
gnathous, 95 and 90 '7. In the Hindoo the nasal index was platyrhine, 54, in the Sikh 
leptorhine, 47. In the Hindoo the orbital index was megaseme, 97, in the Sikh 
microseme, 71. In the palato-maxillary index both were brachyuranic, 123 and 117. 
Although certain differences in their proportions existed between the two skeletons, yet 
in their main features they corresponded so closely to each other, that although the 
skeleton, which throughout I have designated as the tall male Hindoo, belonged as Dr. 
Anderson told me, to a man of Hindoo religion, yet it is possible that he may have been 
a Sikh by race. 
Notwithstanding the incompleteness, and consequent imperfection, of many of the 
data for making a detailed comparison of the skeletal characters of the several races of 
men described or referred to in this Eeport, there is sufficient information to enable one 
to say that racial differences are not confined to the skull, but occur also in other parts 
of the skeleton. The question therefore naturally arises, are these differences of such a 
degree or kind as to point to one race, or group of races, as being in all the relations of the 
skeleton more highly developed than all other races ? or to another race, or group of races, 
as being in all the skeletal relations more lowly developed than all other races ? By highly 
developed I mean a condition of the skeleton which is further removed either from the 
characters and proportions of the skeleton in mammalia other than man, or from the 
infantile condition of man himself ; and by lowly developed, one which is either more 
closely approximated to the mammalian characters and proportions, or to the infantile 
condition of the human skeleton. In other words, is there in the different varieties or 
races of men such a graded condition of the skeleton as would indicate, that by successive 
stages a human type had been produced which in all its skeletal relations was superior 
to all other forms of humanity; and that the stages, through which the skeleton had 
passed to reacli that type, were represented by the various races which either now inhabit, 
or at some former epoch have inhabited, the different parts of the globe. 
Although our knowledge of the races which inhabited the earth in the early parts 
of the human period is very imperfect, researches made during the latter half of the 
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