36 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
Australian pelves which he had measured, and which probably included the five pelves 
previously measured by Professor Huxley, and that measured by Dr. Barnard Davis, 
gave an average pelvic index of 98. From Dr. Garson’s measurements of five Australian 
female pelves an index of 9 1 has been computed. In my series of six adult males, recorded 
in Table I., the mean brim index was 97, and in the only female 96 ; of the six males 
three exceeded 95, one of them very considerably so, and three were below that number. 
There is now, I think, sufficient material before us to pronounce a definite opinion on 
the relative size of the transverse and conjugate diameters of the pelvic brim in both 
sexes of Australians. It is clear that in the women the transverse diameter is larger, and 
not unfrequently considerably larger, than the conjugate, so that the pelvic index is for 
the race relatively low: If we include M. Verneau’s two female pelves, which, from their 
low index of 80, one might be disposed to doubt if they belonged to genuine Australians, 
the mean index of the nine females measured was 88*5, and, if we exclude these, it was 
91 ’3 ; in either case being considerably above the European mean for the same sex, and 
placing the Australian female pelvis on the verge between the mesatipellic and platypellic 
groups. In the males, on the other hand, the conjugate diameter very often exceeds the 
transverse, and seldom falls much below it, and as the transverse diameter rapidly 
diminishes in the pubic region, a cuneiform pelvic brim is produced. The mean brim 
index of the twenty-four males measured by Ecker, Keferstein, Huxley, Spengel, 1 
Verneau, Flower, and myself is 96 '6, so that they distinctly belong to the dolichopellic 
(dolicholekanic) group. 
Data for enabling one to obtain a knowledge of the brim index in the Bush race 
have been furnished by several anatomists. The brim measurements of five males have 
been recorded by Johannes Muller, Huxley, G. Fritsch, and myself, and of eight 
females by Vrolik, Muller, Huxley, Gortz, Verneau, and Fritsch. 2 In the females 
the transverse diameter in some specimens considerably exceeded the conjugate, 
thus in Verneau’s table the mean of his two pelves, one of which was the well-known 
Hottentot Venus described by Cuvier, gave 87 mm. for the conjugate and 122 mm. for the 
transverse diameters, with a brim index therefore of 7 1 ; whilst in the woman Afandy, 
described by Gortz, the conjugate was 111 mm. and the transverse 110 mm., which 
give an index of 100 ‘9. The mean brim index in the eight women was 89, which places 
the female pelvis in the highest term of the platypellic group, though individual specimens 
belonged to each of the three divisions. The male Bush pelves, again, showed a much 
smaller range of variation in the brim index, and the conjugate and transverse diameters 
were more nearly equal. The lowest index, 93, was in Fritsch’s specimen, in which the 
conjugate diameter was 96 and the transverse 103 mm., and the highest index, 109, was 
1 Spengel’s measurements of pelves in the Blumenbach collection at Gottingen, are given by Barnard Davis in the 
Supplement to bis Thesaurus Craniorum in a Table opposite page 96. 
2 Professor Humphry gives in bis treatise on the Human Skeleton, p. 106, the transverse and conjugate diameters 
of the pelvic brim in three Bush skeletons, but he does not state the sex. 
