2 A CRANIOMETRIC STUDY 



excellent bibliography up to 1911 will be found furnished by 

 Mr. H. Piers(^)in Vol. XIII of these Transactions. A general 

 survey of these memoirs indicates, however, that the history, 

 customs, manners, beliefs, language and literature of this 

 tribe have been the subjects mainly dealt with, and, as Mr. 

 PiersC) himself states, — "no data are available regarding 

 measurements of Micmac skulls, etc., whereby we might com- 

 pare them with those of other tribes." Hrdlicka(^) in his 

 elaborate memoir on the Physical Anthropology of the 

 Eastern Indians of the United States likewise makes the 

 significant statement, that "Much also remains to be done 

 with respect to the Algonquians. The Canadian tribes have 

 scarcely been touched as yet." 



The Micmac Skull which forms the subject of this memoir 

 is the only specimen in existence in the Nova Scotia Provincial 

 Museum, and also as far as I can ascertain, in the Province. 

 The writer wishes to express his indebtedness to Mr. H. Piers, 

 the Curator of the Museum, for the privilege of having ex- 

 amined the skull, and also for being granted permission to make 

 a mesial sagittal section, in order to investigate the various 

 important basal angular measurements. 



The descriptive label attached to the specimen briefly 

 states that it is the "skull of a Micmac Indian, killed at Four 

 Mile House, Bedford Basin, near Halifax, during the con- 

 struction of the railway to Windsor in 1854." It was pre- 

 sented to the Museum in 1872 by the late Dr. William H. 

 Weeks of Dartmouth, N. S., who was then a coroner of 

 Halifax County. Mr. Piers informs me that the original 

 label of this Micmac skull, in the writing of Dr. Honeyman, 

 former curator of the Provincial Museum, merely states that 

 it is a "Micmac's skull." Dr. Honeyman, however, told Mr. 

 Piers, that it was the skull of a Micmac who had been killed 

 at Four Mile House (now Rockingham) during the con- 

 struction of the railway there. The railway from Halifax to 



