Macalister — On Cranium of Lord Hoive's Islander, 769 



XCII. — On the CEAimjM of a Natiye of Lord Howe'9 Island. By 

 A. Macalister, M. D., r.E..S., Professor of Anatomy, University 

 of Dublin. 



[Eead, December 11, 1882.] 



Through the kindness of Lowry Armstrong, Esq., of H. M. S. " Cor- 

 morant," I have obtained the skull of a native of this very-little- 

 known island. There are three islands of the south-east Pacific often 

 confounded with each other, and called by this name : the first of 

 these, and the one to which I at present refer, is one of the Queen 

 Charlotte groups in S. lat., 11° 10', East long. 165°, and is the next 

 land to Egmont Island. 



Another island of the same name, or, according to Captain Cook, 

 a set of islets united by a marginal reef, was described and first visited 

 by Wallis in 1767, in S. lat. 36° 50', and E. long. 154° 21', in the 

 region known as the Coral Sea; and yet another Lord Howe's Island 

 lies east of New Ireland, of the Solomon group, in S. lat. 5° 30', and 

 159° 31' E. long. 



Less seems to be known of the first than of either of the others, 

 and no other cranium has as yet reached this country from it. 



The skull in question is cryptozygous, and, to use the term invented 

 for the crania of the neighbouring race of ISTew Caledonians, hypsi- 

 stenocephalic.^ It was that of a young man, known during life to some 

 of the persons who had the opportunity of disinterring it some years 

 after its burial. He was supposed to be about twenty-seven, but, from 

 the patent basi-occipito-sphenoidal suture, can scarcely have been so 

 old ; he is described as having been black and woolly-haired, as are 

 the others who inhabit the island. The bones are porous ; the frontal 

 suture is open for about a centimetre over the nose, but obliterated 

 above ; the coronal suture presents the not uncommon character of 

 being nearly toothless for about 5 cm. on each side of the middle 

 line, then for about 3 cm. it is richly toothed, as far as the tem- 

 poral crest, while the lower 2^ cm. is again smooth.- The sagittal 

 suture is accidentally slightly depressed in one place, and its denti- 

 culations, slighter and simpler in front, are rich and complex behind. 

 The lambdoidal, also richly toothed, has one wormian bone on the 

 right side near the top of the suture. There is a wormian bone at the 

 top of the left alisphenoid, directly below the line of the coronal, but 

 not occupying more than one-half of the long spheno-parietal suture, 

 which measures 2 cm. The muscular crests are feebly developed; the 

 inion small and rounded, but the impression for the splenius capitis 

 is unusually distinct and flattened outwards, projecting against the 

 mastoid process. The occipital condyles are unsymmetrical, the right 

 being smaller than the left, and the margin of the foramen magnum is 



' Barnard Davis, "Natuurk. Verhand. v. d. HollandscheMaatschappij." Haar- 

 lem xxiv. deal. 



- This character I have often seen ; it is well marked in some Kanaka and 

 Fijian skulls in our Museum, 



