DATA FOR THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION IN MAN.

Abstract

A FIRST study* of the hand was published in 1899 by Miss Whiteley and Professor Pearson who dealt with the measurements of the first joints of the fingers in 551 pairs of female hands.In that memoir they had in view a full statistical reduction of Dr Pfitzner's measurements on the hand skeletonf, proposing to compare his and their own results.Although Dr Pfitzner has only measured about 50 female hands, still the large number of bones he has dealt with and the numerous correlations to be found rendered the arithmetical work by no means light After Miss Whiteley had progressed some way with the reduction of the metacarpal bone correlations, she was unable to continue the work, which was then taken in hand and completed by Miss Lewenz.To her accordingly most of the numerical constants given in this paper are duef.Although the paucity of data is a great'drawback, it yet seemed better in the first place to reduce the short series of female instead of the longer series of male hands, because only this Bex had been dealt with in the first study.We hope eventually to obtain measurements on the male hand and compare them with Dr Pfitzner's male series.In every case we give the probable error of our determinations which are naturally large.In all the workings grouping has been avoided and standard deviations and correlations found by taking actual sums of the squares and of the products of deviations.In the statement of general results we have, bearing in mind the largeness of the probable errors, endeavoured to express only conclusions which result from an examination of several series and not from single instances.(2) We may divide our discussion into four parts: (i) the comparison of the absolute lengths and variabilities of different bones in both hands; (ii) the

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