Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/17

Rh channel extending to where the "external" unites with the "internal lip," which is continued down from the well- defined, low, elongate process, b, forming the beginning of such so-called "internal lip" of the "linea aspera." This rough ridge is here by no means a low linear rising, but a thick outstanding one, d, which bifurcates at the lower fifth part of the shaft, d′: the outer division extends, narrower or sharper, to the back and outer border of the ectocondyle; the inner branch, going to the entocondyle, is less produced, but sufficiently so to define a flattened surface of the intervening triangular "popliteal space." The inner (tibial) surface of the proximal half of the shaft is divided into two facets by a low obtuse longitudinal prominence of the femoral wall. The shaft of the thigh- bone (fig. 2) is relatively thicker and stronger than is that of the average of modern male femora (figs. 3 & 4). The length of the preserved portion of the left femur is 1 foot 9 lines; the total length of the bone, with the extremities restored, as indicated in Plate IV., would be 1 foot 4$1⁄2$ inches. The circumference of the middle of the shaft is 3 inches 9 lines. The depression on the outer side of the outer condyle, here preserved,—usually described as the "popliteal groove," as affording origin to the "popliteus,"—is longer and broader than in recent femora, and indicates a thicker tendon and a more powerful muscle. Of the "head of the femur" belonging to the right limb, I have only to remark that the depression for attachment of the "round ligament" is longer or more elliptic in shape and deeper than usual.

The muscles known as "gluteus maximus" in man are those that mainly move or work the trunk upon the