PALEOLITHIC RACES 505 



all that I can discover bearing directly on our subject. For the 

 sake of completeness it may be as well to give some account of 

 the bodily characters of this interesting people, and a few words 

 as to their history. 



The Tasmanians were of medium stature, the average height 

 of the men being 1,661 mm., with a range of from 1,548 to 

 1,732 mm.; the average height of the women was 1,503 mm., 

 with a range of from 1,295 to 1,630 mm. The colour of the skin 

 was almost black, inclining to brown. The eyes were small and 

 deep-set, beneath strong overhanging brows ; the nose short 

 and broad, with widely distended nostrils ; the mouth big ; and 

 the teeth larger, it is said, than those of any other existing 

 race. 



The hair was black and grew in close corkscrew ringlets. 

 The men had hair on their face — whiskers, moustache, and 

 beard, and on the borders of the whiskers it assumed the form 

 of tufted pellets like peppercorns. 



It is a commonplace amongst biologists that characters of 

 apparently the most trivial significance are precisely those 

 which are of the greatest value as a means to classification, and 

 it is on the degree of curliness or twist in the hair that the most 

 fundamental subdivision of the human race is based. We thus 

 recognise three groups : one in which the hair is without any 

 twist — that is, perfectly straight — theLissentrichi ; another in 

 which it is twisted to an extreme, as in the Negro or Bushman — 

 the Ulotrichi ; and a third in which the hair is only twisted 

 enough to be wavy, as in many Europeans — the Cymentrichi. 

 The Tasmanian is ulotrichous, like the Negro and most other 

 races with very dark skins. 



The bony framework, being more resistent to decay than the 

 rest of the body, is more likely to be preserved in the fossil 

 state, and has therefore a certain amount of importance in our 

 study. We shall restrict our description, however, to the skull, 

 as more is to be learnt from this than from any other portion 

 of the skeleton. 



The skull of the Tasmanian is of a characteristic form, so that 

 a practised eye can readily distinguish it from that of other 

 races. Looked upon directly from above, its outline is oval 

 or more or less pentagonal ; its greatest breadth lies con- 

 siderably behind the middle line. The crown rises into a low 

 keel, bordered by a groove-like depression on each side ; the 



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