LIFE OF FLOWER 157 



intercourse with this interesting people and their final 

 extermination ; pointing out that the last male died in 

 1869, and the last female in 1876. At the time this 

 lecture was delivered four complete skeletons of Tas- 

 manians of both sexes had been obtained and sent to 

 England by the late Mr. Merton Allport, of Hobart. 

 Of these, two were then in the museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, while the third was in the collec- 

 tion of the late Dr. Barnard Davis, and the fourth in 

 that of the Anthropological Institute of London. Dr. 

 Davis's specimen came to the Museum of the College 

 of Surgeons after the owner's death ; and it was 

 a great source of satisfaction to Sir William that, in 

 after years, he obtained the Anthropological Institute's 

 specimen (which is remarkable for retaining the inter- 

 frontal suture of the skull) for the Natural History 

 Museum. Somewhat less than thirty Tasmanian skulls 

 were at this time known to exist in England, and a 

 few have been since acquired for public collections. 

 Flower dwelt upon the close affinity of the Tasmanians 

 to the Melanesians (although the skulls of the two are 

 perfectly distinguishable), and their wide difference 

 from their Australian neighbours. 



Perhaps, however, the most important contribution 

 made by Flower to anthropology in 1878 was his paper 

 on the "Methods and Results of Measurements of the 

 Capacity of Human Crania," which appeared in the 

 Report of the British Association for that year and also 

 in Nature. 



This was paving the way for the first part of the 

 valuable " Catalogue of Osteological Specimens in the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England," 



