These eminences are usually much less in women than in men, in children than in adults, in weak animals than in carnivorous ones who live by attacking and destroying their prey. The prominence of the eminences of insertion is always an index of the force and vigour of the motions. They are the more developed in proportion as the muscles are. Examine comparatively the skeleton of a strong, sanguineous man, whose muscles are powerfully delineated through the integuments, and that of a feeble, phlegmatic man, whose rounded forms like those of women, do not appear prominent, and you will see the difference. The form of these eminences of insertion varies greatly; sometimes the muscles are inserted by many separate aponeurotic fibres; then they are small, very numerous and form only little asperities imprinted on a greater or less surface; sometimes it is by a single tendon that the muscle takes its origin, then the apophysis is usually very prominent, and occupies a small space. Sometimes a broad aponeurosis gives rise to the fleshy fibres; it is then a bony line, more or less projecting that gives insertion. The eminences are in general in proportion to the muscles that are attached to them; for example, in three muscles of nearly equal size, one of which is attached by separate fibres, the other by a tendon, and the other by an aponeurosis, we observe that the sum of the asperities of insertion of the first, the separate apophysis of the second, and the prominent line of the third are nearly equal in the quantity of osseous substance that forms them; so that by supposing that the apophysis was divided into asperities, or extended into a line, or that the asperities were united together, or the line concentrated so as to form an apophysis, this quantity of osseous substance would be found to be about the same. We understand all the advantage of the eminences for the insertion of muscles, which they render distant from the centre of the bone, lessen the parallelism with its axis and consequently favour their motions in an evident manner. Are these produced by the pulling of the muscles? This opinion borrowed from the laws of the formation of soft and inorganic bodies, does not accord with the known phenomena of vitality, with the existence of eminences where there is no muscular insertion, and which are often more prominent than these, with the disproportion that exists between the elongation of certain apophyses by muscular insertion, that of the styloid, for example, and the force of the muscles that are attached to it, &c. The eminences for ligamentary insertion have the advantage, by removing a little the ligament from the articulation, of facilitating its motions; this is especially remarkable in the lateral ligaments of the elbow, the knee, &c. As to the other eminences of insertion, we can hardly consider in a general manner their respective functions.