IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 259 



and shining hair, their projecting mandibles, pertain likewise to the 

 peninsula of Malacca. They are so well known as the most intelligent 

 and, after their manner, the most civilized of the islanders of the 

 South Sea, that it would be useless in this short sketch to dwell upon 

 them. Their skulls are scarcely wanting in any ethnographic col- 

 lection. 



I class as Polynesians the dusky or brownish skinned inhabitants of 

 the Tonga islands, of New Zealand, of Otahiti, of the Sandwich 

 islands, and of a great number of groups of less considerable islands 

 dispersed through the Micronesian archipelago of the Pacific. The 

 skulls of Polynesians have generally the occiput more flattened 

 than the Malays; their jaws and teeth are less prominent; the 

 skulls themselves larger than those of the Malays proper. The 

 Polynesians are commonly large, well proportioned, and rather 

 muscular, and in character and temper compare favorably with the 

 Malays. In the royal ethnographic collection of the Carolinska Insti- 

 tute, there are skulls from the Sandwich islands and New Zealand 

 which might be ranked in the first class for size, and particularly for 

 height. 



PAPOUS OF GUOY AND GAIMARD. 



(Mops-Papus of Dampier.) 



Dampier, Forrest, and several old travellers mention a particular 

 people of blackish brown color, inhabiting the shores of the islands 

 near the north coast of New Guinea, who are to be distinguished from 

 the other islanders of the Pacific by many peculiarities, especially by a 

 profuse head of black hair, which is so finely crisped as to present the 

 appearance of being frizzled. Guoy and Gaimard, who accompanied 

 De Freycinet on the corvettes Uranie and Pliysicienne had made us 

 more exactly acquainted with this people and the particular form of 

 their skulls. The most important point which results from their ob- 

 servations, as appears to me, is that their skulls are entirely different 

 from those of the Australian negroes. While these latter, as indi- 

 cated above, are quite low, narrow, of elongated oval form, and 

 provided with a greatly projecting occipital protuberance, the skulls 

 of these Papuans are, on the contrary, according to Guoy and 

 Gaimard, high, short, large, and flattened on the occiput. "The 

 heads of these Papuans," they say, " present a flattening both before 

 and behind, accompanied with a considerable development of the 

 jaws. The skull is of remarkable height, the parietal protuberances 

 salient, and the temples very convex; the anterior part of the temporal 

 regions, across which the coronal suture prolongs itself below the level 

 of the semicircular line of the temples, presents a peculiar and very 

 marked projection.* The nasal bones are placed almost vertically, 

 compressed backward as it were. The nasal apophysis or frontal of 

 the upper maxilla is large and made much more prominent than usual 



I discover that this peculiar projection exists also in general in the heads of Malays 

 and Polynesians. — Author. 



