REPORT ON THE BONES OF THE HUMAN SKELETON. 
89 
SHAFT OF THE SUPERIOR EXTREMITY. 
xA.s a general rule, the bones of the upper limb of the aboriginal skeletons which I 
have examined had not the ridges and processes for the attachment of muscles of 
especial magnitude, so that they did not express great muscular clevelopmeut. In 
many instances the bones were slender and with smooth surfaces. This character was 
especially noticed in the Australian. Chinese, Andaman Islanders, Hindoo, and Negress 
skeletons. In the male Sikh the bones were much more powerful, and in the Te Aroha 
New Zealander, Bush, male Laplander, and Esquimaux they had a robust appearance. 
In no specimen was a supra-condyloid process or foramen present. An intercondyloid 
(supra-trochlear) foramen existed in both humeri of the Queensland Australian, left 
humerus of Sikh, left humerus of each of the Oaliuans, right humerus of a female 
Andaman Islander, and all the humeri of two other Andaman Islanders, left humerus 
of Bushman, the humeri of the two Negresses, right humerus of one Negro, and both 
humeri of the larger male Hindoo. Of the fifty-eight humeri examined in these 
skeletons, the intercondyloid foramen existed, therefore, in eighteen specimens, being at 
the rate of 31 per cent., which is a very much larger proportion than one finds in the 
humeri of modern Europeans, in which it has been estimated by MM. Hamy and 
Sauvages as from 4 to 5 per cent. 1 Observations on its frequency in several aboriginal 
races have now been put on record. Thus M. Broca found it to be frequent in the 
humeri of the people of the stone period. 2 Professor Wyman states that in the Mound 
builders of the United States it has been seen in 31 per cent., 3 and M. Topinard gives 
the proportion in Polynesians as 34 per cent., in Melanesians 14 per cent., in Negros 
21 per cent., and in natives of the Grand Canary Islands as 25 - G per cent. 4 Professor 
Flower found it very common in female Andaman Islanders, ocurring in eleven out of 
seventeen humeri, whilst it was only five times present in sixteen humeri of males. 
This defect in the ossification of the humerus, it may be noted, occurs frequently in 
races many of which exhibit, in the weight and massiveness of their crania, evidence of 
an almost exuberant ossification in that part of the skeleton. 
In the Chinese and the female Hindoo, the upper epiphysis of the humerus and the 
lower epiphysis of both radius and ulna, were not fully fused with the shafts of their 
respective bones, for the line of demarcation between shaft and epiphysis was a isible on 
the surface of each bone. 
1 Quoted by M. Topinard, reference below. 2 Bull. Soc. d’Anthropologie, 1865. 
3 Reports of Peabody Museum , 1871. 4 Elements d’Anthropologie generale, 1SS5, p. 1015. 
(ZOOL. CHALL. EXP. — PART XLVII. — 1886.) 
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