Tasmanian Crania. 49 



the deficiency of one is due to the fact that when we were pro- 

 secuting our researches on these skulls in January and February, 

 1909, we discovered that one, number three of Harper and 

 Clarke's memoir, was missing from the museum, and its w^here- 

 abouts could not be ascertained. As a point of very particular 

 interest, it may be mentioned that this series of eleven com- 

 prises the cranium of Truganini or Lalla Rhook, the last of her 

 race. 



Of the remaining forty-two, three are those which Harper and 

 Clarke state in their memoir are the crania of half-castes, and 

 three others are those which the same authors rejected iti toto 

 as not being Tasmanian. We differ from these authors on both 

 points. We have no hesitation whatsoever in stating that all 

 six crania are the crania of pure-blood Tasmanians, and we do 

 so for the following reasons : — 



1. TTiese six crania are now, and always have been, cata- 

 logued by the Hobart Museum authorities as those of pure- 

 bred Tasmanians. They have therefore always been differen- 

 tiated from the crania of other races in the possession of the 

 Museum, and there is ample evidence that Hobart Museum 

 Curators, both past and present, have exercised due precautions 

 in the verification of their material. 



2. Harper and Chirke do not in their monograph give any suffi- 

 cient reasons for rejecting these six crania. All they say is that 

 '■ of this number we rejected at once three skulls as being 

 incorrectly classed, and upon comparing the skulls after measure- 

 ment, we decided to exclude three others, which in our opinion 

 are those of half-castes. The measurements of these three 

 crania are given in our table, but they are otherwise disre- 

 garded." 



Attaching, as we did, considerable weight to the work of 

 Harper and Clarke, we were at the outset of our investigations 

 in Hobart prepared to accept their conclusions, but as our 

 research progressed we were forced to the opinion that their 

 data respecting these six crania were erroneous, and we decided 

 to interview Mr. Clarke as to the precise reasons why he and 

 his coadjutor had rejected these crania. Mr. Clarke very 

 kindly came to the Museum and made another examination of 

 the doubtful crania, with the ultimate result that his opinion 



