1029 
the condition resembling a coarse mosaic, can yet be clearly recog- 
nized as not deviating, in its general features, from the present ab- 
original Australian skull. The cranium as a whole, and the palatum, 
however, hardly admit of any reliable measurements. They could 
still be made at the tooth-crowns, each in itself, but most of them 
have more or less receded from each other; the apparent palatal 
area thus considerably exceeds the real, which, in my opinion, 
was no larger than that of the Australian native of present times. 
SMITH supposes that the (upper) canine tooth, in an analogous way 
as in the dentition of Apes, though without a true diastema in 
the maxilla, penetrated, almost ape-like, with its apex between 
the lower canine and the lower first premolar. In my opinion 
there is reason to doubt this, on the ground of a comparison 
with the teeth of Wadjak Il. The facets on the upper canine, 
which have been described by Smiru (loc.cit. p. 374 et seq. and figures 
6, 21 and 22) and considered by him to have been caused 
by the projecting between the said teeth in the mandible, 
are identical in their position with facets on the upper canine in 
the Wadjak maxilla. One of them, on the distal (posterior) surface, 
can be clearly recognised as interstitial contact facet (Zsic- 
MONDY) with the first premolar tooth (in the maxilla). The other 
placed on the lingual slope of the narrow margin of the mesial 
surface, by the side of the interstitial contact facet on the mesial 
surface caused by the contact with the lateral incisor tooth, is to be 
recognised, by comparison with Wadjak IJ, as belonging to the 
general wear of the masticatory surface. In his reconstruction (Fig. 4) 
SMITH lowers the upper canine tooth to nearly 7 mm. below the 
level of the mesial margin of the upper premolar, till the upper 
border of its crown gets very nearly ona level with the upper border 
of the crown of the premolar. Erroneously, for the crown-border 
of such a large upper canine tooth as the Talgai canine, is always 
considerably above the level of the crown-border of the upper pre- 
molar; in the maxilla of Wadjak Il the distance is 3 mm. The 
upper canine, therefore, cannot have projected so far downward as 
is required according to Smirn’s interpretation of the distal (posterior) 
facet. The canine tooth of Wadjak II, which strikingly resembles 
that of Talgai, is also equally broad as the latter, and if its wear 
were as little advanced as that of the canine of the boy of Talgai, it 
would no doubt be as pointed and little shorter than the latter. 
If for those reasons I cannot agree with Smirn in ascribing to the 
fossil skull of Queensland, which indeed he too considers as typically 
Australian, “characters more ape-like than have been observed in 
: 67 
Proceedings Royal Acad. Amsterdam. Vol. XXIII. 
