DESCRIPTION OF CRANIAL REMAINS from 

 WHANG ARET, NEW ZEALAND. 



By W. Ramsw Smith, D.Sc, M.B., F.R.S.E , Permanent Head 

 of the Department of Public Health of South Australia-. 

 Fellow of tlie Royal Anthropological Institute of Great 

 Britain and Ireland. 



(Plates xxxii.-xxxiii.) 



In February, 1910, Mr. W M. Eraser, County Engineer of 

 Whangarei, New Zealand, wrote to me that he was forwardino' a 

 box containing the upper part of two human skulls. He said 

 that until about two yearsago these remains had been hermetically- 

 sealed under tiftyfeet of decomposed sand for not less than seven 

 hundred or one thousand years, judging by the nature and 

 formation of the country, and that the bone marked " A " was 

 found on a lower level than the one marked " B." The box 

 contained two packages. In one were two pieces of bone marked 

 " A" ; in the other there were five or six pieces marked " B." 



I first cemented together the parts marked " A," and examined 

 them. They formed the whole of a frontal bone and part of the 

 parietals. After an extensive examination of the fragments and 

 a comparison with other skulls of various races I made a summary 

 of the facts and inferences. 



After I had pieced together the fragments marked "B" I 

 found that they and those marked "A " all belonged to the same 

 skull. The amount of skull [)re.sent made it possible for one to 

 make a far greater number of measurements for comparison, and 

 gave a fairly accurate idea of its peculiarities (PI. xxxii., tig. 1). 



Although the bones have the appearance of having been 

 exposed to the weather, the lines defining the boundaries or 

 attachments of muscles are fairly well marked. From this fact 

 and from certain other appearances one infers that it is the skull 

 of a full-grown subject, in all probability a male. There is no 

 appearance of disease nor any sign of artificial deformity pro- 

 duced either during life or after death. 



One striking feature is the thickness of the bones. In some 

 parts the frontal bone measures 16mm. in thickness, and the 

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