The length of the thoracic limb scarcely varies more than between 42.6 and 47.6, according to the lists of sixteen and twenty-seven series published by Ivanovsky and Topinard,[92] and according to a third list of twenty-four series that I have drawn up. We can count on the fingers the populations in which the proportion for the hand exceeds the figure 11 with its decimals or sinks below it; it is the same in regard to the foot, of which the figure 15 with its decimals is rarely exceeded or is not reached.[93] The variations of length for the abdominal limb do not extend further than from 45.1 to 49.2 (Topinard), etc.
The thoracic perimeter exceeds half the height in all adult populations of the world, except perhaps some groups of Georgian Svanes and Jews, or other populations which happen to be in bad hygienic conditions.
Thus proportions of the limbs are not good characters of race. Besides, certain dimensions (length of limbs, of the head) are always dependent on height. Thus individuals and races of high stature have the face and abdominal limb a little more elongated than individuals and races of short stature. On the other hand, individuals and races of short stature have in general the head larger, the trunk shorter, and the thoracic perimeter relatively more considerable than individuals and races of high stature, but the differences are very trifling as a general rule.
Trunk and Limbs of the Living.—To complete our study on the living subject, let us again note some peculiarities. The neck is ordinarily long and thin among Negroes, Ethiopians (Figs. [9] and [138]), and on the contrary short among the majority of the American Indians (Figs. [163] and [169]); the shoulders are very broad among the women of the latter (Fig. [165]), and very narrow among the Chechen and Lesghi women. Usually the long neck is associated with a form of trunk like an inverted pyramid and a high stature, while the short neck surmounts a cylindrical trunk and is associated with a low stature. Ensellure—that is to say, the strongly marked curve of the dorso-lumbo-sacral region—is especially marked among Spanish women whose lumbar incurvation is such, and the movements of the lumbar vertebræ so extensive, that they are able to throw themselves backwards so as even to touch the ground (Duchenne of Boulogne). Ensellure is also more marked among Negroes than among Whites. It must be noted that it may also be merely a consequence of abdominal obesity, pregnancy, or steatopygia.
By the last-mentioned term is designated excessive projection of the buttocks due to the accumulation of subcutaneous fat (Fig. [24]); these are physiological fatty tumours proceeding from the hypertrophy of the adipose tissue more or less abundant in these regions among all races, and analogous to the fatty tumours of the cheeks of the orang-utan, which are simply Bichat’s fatty balls existing among men and among the anthropoids,[94] only excessively developed. As in those tumours, the fat of the steatopygous masses does not even disappear after disease which has emaciated the rest of the body. Steatopygia is characteristic of the Bushman race; it is only met with in all its characters (alteration of form on the lateral and anterior sides of the thighs; persistence even in emaciation, etc.) among populations into the composition of which enters the Bushman element: Hottentots (Fig. [24]), Nama, etc. The cases of steatopygia observed among other Wolof or Somali women, for example, are only the exaggeration of adipose deposit among the muscular fibres, as with Europeans, not of the subcutaneous adipose layer. Steatopygia is especially marked in the Bushman woman, in whom it commences to develop only from the age of puberty; but it exists also, though in a less degree, in the male of that race (Fig. [143]).
FIG. 24.—Hottentot woman of
Griqualand (Cape Colony);
35 years; height, 4 ft. 8 ins.;
cephalic index, 76.4.
Example of steatopygia.
(Photo. Prince Roland Bonaparte.)
We cannot enlarge on other exterior characters: on the form of the trunk and of the limbs; on the leg with poorly developed calf, and the foot with the prominent heel which is observed among certain Negroes (but not among all); on the more or less diverging big toe which is remarked among the majority of the peoples of India, Indo-China, and the insular world dependent on Asia, from Sumatra to Japan, etc.
Two words, however, on the subject of the pretended existence of races of men with tails. We must relegate to the domain of fable the cases of this kind which are announced from time to time in publications for the popularisation of science so called. The costumes of certain populations have given rise to the fable of men with tails (see frontispiece). Isolated cases of men having as an anomaly a caudal excrescence more or less long, free, or united to the trunk, are known to science, and numbers have been described, but no single serious description has ever been given of populations with tails.[95] Quite recently, again, Lartschneider has demonstrated that the ilio-coccygian and pubio-coccygian muscles in mammifera have lost in man their character of symmetrical and paired skeleton muscles, and are driven back towards the interior of the pelvis as single unpaired muscle plates (fibres of the levator ani). Primitive man has never had a caudal appendage since he acquired the biped attitude; the disappearance of the tail is even one of the indispensable conditions of that attitude.[96]