Page:The American Journal of Science, series 4, volume 4.djvu/244

220 special appointment within a space of a few meters to leave there, one its skull, another two teeth, and a third its femur, the whole without want of correlation.

As regards the femur, I have studied particularly the character upon which Mr. Dubois insists, viz: the almost cylindrical form of this bone in the poplitic region, 4 centimeters above the upper margin of the condyles. At this level, the transverse diameter is ordinarily much greater than the antero-posterior diameter. On the femur of Trinil these two diameters are almost equal. At the same time, if we measure, beginning at a point anterior m, two antero-posterior diameters, the one ending at the median point p, the other at the point n situated on the external branch of the bifurcation of the linea aspera, we find mn < mp. I have been able to find this double character on only six human femurs out of more than a thousand belonging to races very diverse. Again it is less accentuated than on the femur from Java, so that this femur presents also in this respect a new "caractère limite" for the human species. One human femur alone presented this character to the same degree as the femur of Trinil; it is a Parisian femur of the Middle Ages, and this bone is pathologic; it presents grave coxalgic lesions and divers characters attesting a consecutive functional impotence. A detailed interpretation of the character in question is found in the Bulletin de la Société d' Anthropologie (t. vi, 4me sér.). It can be summed up as follows: