Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/18

12 legs, and, reciprocally, the legs upon the trunk. The unusual addition of insertional leverage to these muscles in the skeleton under description bespeaks a power and frequency of locomotion, and especially of actions of trunk and of upper limbs, requiring an adequate support and fulcrum in the lower limbs.

The pelvis is but fragmentarily represented: its very size and weight, far from favouring its preservation, hastened its destruction. The pick of the excavator smashed it; and the pieces were scattered by the shoveller among the superincumbent deposits in course of removal. The rescued portions are strictly human, indicate male proportions, and support an inference of the strength of the individual derived from better preserved bones.

I find nothing worthy of note in the portions of the foot-bones above specified.

All the bones and fragments of this Human skeleton were of a dark colour, derived apparently from the darker-coloured powdery sand in which they were brought to light. I applied to them the usual preliminary test in such finds of possible fossils, viz. the application of the tongue. In every instance it adhered, as when in long course of time the gelatine of the recent bone had oozed away, leaving the absorbent calcareo-phosphatic earth in excess. I thereupon called in the aid of my colleague, the experienced and accomplished Chemist of the Department of Mineralogy—aid which he had readily and ably afforded in relation to bones of lower Mammalian (extinct) kinds. Corresponding bones of a recent human skeleton accom-