REPORT ON THE BONES OF THE HUMAN SKELETON. 
99 
of the skeleton from the Oban bone cave, referred to in a preceding paragraph (p. 97), the 
shaft was decidedly platyknemic ; the breadth of the middle of the shaft from the inter- 
osseous to the inner border was 19 mm., and the antero-posterior diameter at the same spot 
was 29 mm., the index was therefore 65 ‘5, a proportion a little higher than that obtained 
by M. Broca as the mean, 64, of the tibiae from the Caverne de l’Homme-Mort, Lozere, 
but not so high as the mean, 66, of the Guanche tibiae from the Great Canary Islands. 
I examined the tibiae in my series of exotic skeletons with reference to the platyknemic 
form, and compared them with a well-formed European tibia. In the Oahuans, adult 
Andaman Islanders, and Bushman the tibial shafts were decidedly compressed, and the 
posterior surface convex, so that they were platyknemic, although not in the same marked 
degree as in the tibia from Cro-Magnon, near Les Eyzies, described by M. Broca, but more 
like those from Perthi-Chwaren figured by Mr. Busk. In many of the other skeletons also, 
as the New Zealanders, Lapps, Esquimaux, Hindoos, Sikh, and Malay, a tendency to the 
platyknemic form was distinctly recognisable. In some of the Australian skeletons, in one 
Hindoo, and in the Chinese the fibular articular area on the external tuberosity of the 
tibia was indistinct, and the same remark applies to the corresponding surface on the 
head of the fibula. In the Anthropoid apes the shaft of the tibia also possesses a certain 
amount of lateral compression, and the posterior surface is somewhat convex, but the 
anterior border of the bone is not sharp but rounded. 
Measurements of the Bones. 
The length of the bones of the shaft of the lower limb was taken by means of a Broca’s 
osteometric board. In each femur I measured the maximum length of the bone between 
the head and the most projecting point of the inner condyle ; the maximum trochanteric 
length from the same point of the inner condyle to the tip of the great trochanter ; the 
length when both condyles were placed in contact with the vertical plane of the 
osteometric board, both to the summit of the head and to the tip of the great troch- 
anter ; these two last measurements constituting what the French anthropologists call 
its length in the oblique position. In each tibia I measured the length from the 
condylar articular surfaces both to the tip of the malleolus and to the base of the 
malleolus, where it articulates with the superior surface of the astragalus. The distance 
from the condylar articular surfaces to the tip of the malleolus I call the maximum length 
of the tibia. In these measurements my object has been to determine the absolute length 
of the femur and tibia, the relative length of the corresponding bones in opposite limbs 
of the same skeleton, the proportionate length which the tibia bears to the femur in the 
same limb, and the relative length of the femur to the humerus. 
The longest femur was in the skeleton presented by Dr. Anderson as a male Hindoo, 
in which the right thigh bone measured in its maximum length 509 mm.; in the other male 
