REPORT ON THE BONES OF THE HUMAN SKELETON. 
35 
Through the investigations of A. Weisbach we possess considerable information on the 
form and dimensions of the pelvis in ten of the races in the Austrian empire. His 
measurements were made on the unmacerated pelves of men between twenty and thirty 
years of age. The mean brim index in these races is as follows. The mean of eivht 
South Slavs 81-5, of twelve Germans 82‘5, of six Slowaks 84*1, of eight Czechs 84'3, 
of twenty Magyars 88*3, of twenty Italians 89*1, of thirteen Ruthenians 89*2, of five 
Gipsies 90'4, of eleven Poles 91*2, and of nine Roumanians 91*6. 
The lowest mean brim index recorded in any European race or nation is 77 for the 
males in the Scottish pelvis, and 69 for the females in the Irish pelvis ; and almost 
without exception this index amongst European races, both males and females, is below 90. 
The highest mean of these races is met with in the male Magyars with a brim index 
88-3 in the male Italians with a brim index 89 T, and in the Ruthenians with a brim 
index 89”2, so that the European pelvis is platypellic (platylekanic). In three however 
of the races in the Austrian empire the mean brim index, as Weisbach ’s measurements 
show, rises above 90, viz., the Gipsies, Roumanians, and Poles. The Gipsies however are 
not a European race, and, the Roumanians have in all probability a strong Oriental 
admixture. It may be, I think, a question whether the eleven pelves described by 
Weisbach as Polish, and to which he gives a mean brim index 91 *2, were either altogether 
or in great part of a pure Sclavonic race, for the mean index of his eight South Slav 
pelves was only 81 ’5, and that of his eight Bohemian Czechs was 84 - 3. I do not con- 
sider therefore that the higher mean index of these so-called Polish pelves should 
interfere with the general statement already made that the European pelvis is platypellic 
(platylekanic). 
In placing the European pelvis, both male and female, so far as it is represented by 
these nations, in the platypellic division, it is not of course to be understood that no 
individual European pelvis ever attains a brim index of 90 or upwards, but that the 
mean in both sexes is below 90, and as a rule is markedly below that number. 
In the next place I shall speak of another type of pelvis, and shall begin by consider- 
ing the brim index in the Australian pelvis. All the anatomists who have written on 
the characters of the male pelvis in this race agree in stating that the pelvic brim is 
narrow in its transverse diameter as compared with the conjugate. Professor Huxley, who 
was one of the first, if not the first, to give a numerical expression to these diameters in 
this race, gives the mean pelvic index of five males which he had measured as 101, and 
of one female as 87. In only one of these males was the transverse diameter in excess 
of the conjugate. In Ecker’s Australian male the index was 100, in Keferstein’s 95, and 
the mean index of the five Australian males in the Blumenbach collection, as measured 
by Spengel, was 92. In the single male Australian measured by M. Verneau the brim 
index was 98, and the mean of this index in two females was 80. Professor Flower, in his 
account of the osteology of the Andaman Islanders, incidentally stated that ten male 
