Scott. — Osteology of the Maori and Moriori. 23 



The large cranial capacity of these skulls is worthy of 

 note. Their average is l,417c.c. The average cephalic in- 

 dex, 78-5, shows them to be more brachycephalic than the 

 adults. The altitudiual index, 76-3, also shows a greater 

 relative height ; but, as in the adult skulls, the cephalic 

 index is higher than the altitudinal. There is, however, 

 a greater difference between these indices in the young skulls 

 than was found in the adult crania. The mean frontal 

 index, 65-5, is, as might be expected, lower in this group 

 thaii in the adult skulls. The mean orbital index, 93-7, 

 is markedly higher ; indeed, in one skull it is 103-1. The 

 nasal index is almost identical with the average for the 

 adult crania. For the young skulls it is 48-2, for the adults 

 48 1. The more feeble development of the face results in the 

 lower gnathic index and the higher palato- maxillary. The 

 premature closure of the interparietal suture in the most doli- 

 chocephalic of the S3 skulls has been already referred to. 



Crania from the Chatham Islands — Moriori. 



Our knowledge of the now almost extinct Moriori inhabit- 

 ants of the Chatham Islands is very slight. It is true that 

 they have been known to Europeans for rather more than one 

 hundred years, as the islands were discovered by Lieutenant 

 Broughton, in Her Majesty's brig "Chatham," in 1790; but no 

 use seems to have been made of this discovery till about 1828, 

 when whalers and sealers from Sydney first began to visit 

 them. These men, however, left no written record, and when 

 the regular settlement began, between 1840 and 1850, the 

 Morioris were a rapidly-dying race, much inferior in point 

 of numbers to the Maoris, who had conquered them and 

 taken possession of the islands in 1835, and so timid from ill- 

 usage that intercourse with them was not easily established. 

 They were a gentle people, who, in the words of one of the 

 Maori invaders, " did not know how to fight, and had no 

 weapons," and had been quickly either massacred or enslaved. 

 An epidemic in 1839 had aided the work of destruction ; so 

 that during the twenty years that followed the Maori invasion 

 their numbers had dwindled from an estimated 2,000 to 212. 

 Since then, though, of course, Maori oppression has cease'd, 

 they have not been able to accommodate themselves to the 

 new conditions of life, and the decrease has continued steadily. 

 In 1881 there were forty-three adults and one child, and now 

 only thirty-five are left, and some of these are not of pure 

 Moriori blood. '■= 



According to their own traditions, their ancestors came 



* A. Shand : '! The Occupation of the Chatham Islands by the Maoris 

 in 1835" ; "Journal of the Polynesian Society," vol. i., 1892. 



