1894-95.] Prof. Sir Wm. Turner on Pithecantliivpus erectus. 425 
that Man has acquired a more erect position since the Quaternary 
period. 
In a memoir on the skeleton of a man referred to the Quaternary 
period, which was exposed in October 1888, along with flint flakes 
and worked portions of reindeers’ bones and horns, at Reymonden, 
in the commune of Chancelade, in the Dordogne, Professor Testut 
described * a broken tibia, the upper end of which had the same 
backward direction as in the skeletons from Bollwiller and Spy. 
He regarded it as an ape-like character, indicating that in the 
standing position the knees projected more prominently forwards 
than in existing races. The skull was dolichocephalic, the length- 
breadth index being 72. The cranial capacity, taken by Broca’s 
method, was 1730 c.c., which is greatly in excess of the mean of 
modern European men. 
In arriving at the conclusion as to the signification of the form 
and direction of the femoral condyles and the superior articular 
end of the tibia, these observers had not sufficiently taken into 
consideration the influence which position or attitude would 
exercise in modifying the bones of the limbs, and the effects which 
would be produced by occupation, habit, and muscular action on 
the bones, wffien in the plastic stage of growth. In the memoir 
which I published in 1886 on Human Skeletons, in the Reports 
of H.M.S. Challenger,^ I called attention to the squatting attitude 
assumed by so many savage races, as a factor to be considered in 
determining the shape of the pelvis and the curvature of the 
lumbar spine. I also pointed out the influence which might be 
exercised on the form and extent of the areas for muscular attach- 
ment on the scapula, in those races of men who are in the habit 
of climbing trees in search of food, or for other objects. 
The influence of the squatting posture in modifying the form 
of the external condylar surface of the tibia, and in extending the 
articular areas of the tibio-astragalar joint in savage races, has now 
been worked out in detail by Professor Arthur Thomson, of Oxford. J 
* Bulletin de la Soe. d' Anthropologie de Lyon, t. viii., 1889. Lyon, 1889. 
+ Zoology, Challenger Expedition, part xlvii., 1886, pp. 58, 77, 88. See 
also my Lecture on Variability in the Skeleton in different Races of Men, in 
Journ. of Anat. and Phys., April 1887, p. 473, vol. xxi. 
X Journ. of Anat. and Phys., July 1889, vol. xxiii. p. 616, and additional 
paper in the same Journal, Jan. 1890. 
