426 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
Professor Manouvrier published in the following year an elabo- 
rate paper on retroversion of the head of the tibia, and on 
the attitude of man in the Quaternary period.* He examined 
several hundred tibiae of neolithic men, modern Parisians and 
savage races, and arrived at the conclusion that, in a notable 
proportion of these, tibiae occurred in which the head was as 
strongly inclined backwards as in the men of Spy, and in some 
instances, as in the tibiae of the Indians of California, even more 
so ; and yet these people assume, without a shadow of doubt, a 
vertical attitude when standing. 
Professor Havelock Charles has studied the bones of the lower 
limbs in natives of the Punjab,! who habitually assume the squat- 
ting attitude. He confirms Professor Thomson’s observations on 
the articular surface of the head of the tibia, and the additional 
facets at the tibio-astragalar joint. He also figures the retroversion 
of the head of the tibia, and describes modifications in the upper 
and lower articular ends of the femur, and in the acetabulum, all 
of which he associates with the squatting position. 
It is obvious, therefore, that position and habit materially 
modify the forms of the bones, and that characters which MM. 
Collignon and Fraipont thought to be indicative of an inability 
to attain, in the full sense, the erect attitude, were due to the 
customary position of squatting, which both ancient and modern 
savages assumed when at rest. We have no evidence, therefore, 
that Quaternary man was not as capable of raising his body to 
the erect attitude as the men of the present day ; and Professor 
Testut’s observations further show that a tibia with a retroverted 
head may be associated with a skull of unusually high internal 
capacity. 
Thus the retroversion of the head of the tibia, to which the above 
observers attached so much importance, is of no value as a proof of 
the existence of a transitional form between man and apes. 
A few months ago, M. Eugene Dubois, surgeon in the army of 
the Indian Netherlands, published! a memoir descriptive of some 
bones recently found in Java. From the title of his work, “ Pi- 
* Memoires de la SocUt4 d' Anthropologie de Paris, 2nd series, t. iv., 1890. 
t Journ. of Anal, and PJiys., Oct. 1893, April 1894, vol. xxviii. 
+ Batavia, 1894. 
