Fi>rnni('ii Occijnfdle Mdijitain. 'ZOf> 



two i;i';ive ohjrttidiis. Bct'orL' a skull ran he examined hy Hoik's 

 inetlio(l ir must be bisected. This in itself constitutes an almost 

 insuju'i alile ditticulty. for, notwithstanding Huxley's^ now out-of- 

 date dittuiii that, " it shall he an oppidljiiuni to an ethnological 

 eollectinn to possess a single skull whieh is not bisected longitudi- 

 nally." the seii'Tire of eoniparat ive naniology has .so far advaneed 

 as to lender the bisection of skulls unni-cessary f(U' modern investi- 

 gations. 



The second objection I find against Bolk's method, is, that tliere 

 is a ditiieulty in determining the frontal point. As already defined, 

 this point is " the lowest point of the frontal wall of the skull where 

 the interit)r surface . . . bends inwardly in a more or less steep 

 eui-ve. to lie continued in the roof of the nasal cavity." After ex- 

 amining a nundjer of bisected Australian aboriginal crania, I find 

 it is not always possil)le to determine this point with accuracy. The- 

 crista fiontalis is projected into the skull in many cases foi- s-everal 

 millimetres. 



Bolk' himself says that in the skulls of the Javanese, with one 

 exception, he found a " frontal crest projecting very far into the 

 cranial space." From this it would appear that a considei-able- 

 difficulty may be exjaei-ienced in attempting to detei-minc tlie exact 

 position of the fronton, for as the crista frontalis projects, so wilt 

 it affect the basal index. It seems, therefore, that this latter objec- 

 tion, which has been laised, wt)uld appear to be a real one. It is, 

 then, difficult to see how Bolk's new base line can ever serve as 

 the basis of a craniometrical system, particulaidy in view of tire- 

 objection that it necessitates the bisection of every skull, and with- 

 out such bisection it is eonipletely useless. 



The objects of the present paper ai'e two in nundjer. The first 

 is to record certain ol)servations based mainly on the median 

 sagittal diagrams of some fifty-two Tasnumian ciania, and the 

 second is to ascertain from certain of these observations bv means 

 of biometric analysis, wliich method is the best to apply to non- 

 bisected skulls foi- tlie determination of the position and slope of 

 the foramen occipitale magnum. 'J'lie observations I have recoided 

 are eight in number, and are as follows : — 



(1) The length of the foramen ociipitale mairnum, measui-ect 



from basion to o)>isthion. 



(2) The greatest bieadth of the foramen occipitale magnum. 

 (3") The foraminal index. 



Breadth of foramen x 100. 

 Lenirth of foramen 



