1891 - 95 .] Prof. Sir Wm. Turner on PitliecantliTopus erectus. 435 
bone, and its surface was not smoothed down by friction against 
extraneous objects. Its length from the highest point of the head 
to a line connecting the lowest points of the two condyles was 455 
mm. In his description of the bone, M. Dubois recognises many 
features of correspondence with the human femur ; in the shape of 
the head, that of the trochanters and of the anterior inter-trochanteric 
line; in the development of the ridge for the insertion of the 
gluteus maximus ; in the angle formed by the neck with the shaft, 
in the compression of the neck, in the form of the lower articular 
end, and of the inter-condyloid fossa, and in the presence of a linea 
aspera, it repeats the human characters, so much so, indeed, that 
Dubois has no hesitation in concluding that the femur could be ex- 
tended, both on the trunk and leg, as to admit of the erect attitude. 
On the other hand, he states that it differs from the human 
thigh bone, in the absence of an angulus medialis or line separating 
the anterior convex surface from the inner surface ; in the inner 
surface being convex and not concave ; in the popliteal surface 
having less definite lateral boundaries, and being somewhat convex 
and not flat, whilst the inter-trochanteric crest is less elevated, 
narrower and turned inwards, so that this line is not straight, but 
concave. These supposed points of difference are, he considers, of 
sufficient moment to distinguish it from the human bone, and to 
approximate it to the femur of anthropoid apes. In arriving at 
this conclusion, M. Dubois has not had before him, for purposes of 
comparison, a sufficient number of human femora, and has not 
realised the variations which occur in the bone in those areas where 
he conceives that the Java specimen differs from the femur in Man. 
Prom the examination of a large number of femora, both European 
and exotic, I am able to state that the characters which Dubois 
considers not to be human are occasional varieties in the femur of 
Man, so that they lose all significance as marks of differentiation 
from the human femur. 
There can be no doubt that the Java femur is a human bone, 
but whether it is the thigh bone of the skeleton to which the 
calvaria belonged is, I think, extremely doubtful. The distance at 
which it was found from the skull-cap and the fact that it was 
lying in an alluvium brought down in the course of a tropical river, 
show that the remains were only loosely associated with each other, 
