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XXVIII. — Contributions to the Craniology of the People of the Empire of India. 

 Part I. The Hill Tribes of the North -East Frontier and the People of 

 Burma. By Professor Sir Wm. Turner, M.B., D.C.L., F.K.S. (With 

 Three Plates.) 



(Read July 3, 1899.) 



For a number of years I have been collecting specimens and conducting an investiga- 

 tion into the craniological characters of the native inhabitants of our great Indian 

 Empire, and several hundred skulls have now been under examination, and almost 

 all have been measured. The sources to which I have been indebted for material are in 

 part the collection of crania belonging to the Henderson Trustees, long known as the 

 Edinburgh Phrenological Museum, and now deposited by the Trustees in the Anatomical 

 Museum of the University ; in part, a few specimens belonging to the University 

 collected by my predecessors in office ; in part, the valuable series of Indian crania 

 belonging to the Indian Museum, Calcutta, which through the intercession of Dr John 

 Anderson, F.R.S., the former Director, the Trustees of that Museum, with great liberality, 

 most courteously permitted me to have the loan of for purposes of study ; and lastly, a 

 number of crania which have been forwarded to me by friends and former pupils, 

 engaged in the public service in India, to whom I take this opportunity of expressing 

 my indebtedness for the valuable material which I have received from them. 



Owing to the number of specimens and the wide range of country from which they 

 have been derived, I have thought it advisable to depart from my original intention of 

 including in one memoir my observations on the whole series of crania, and in preference, 

 to arrange and publish them in groups, based on the geographical distribution of the 

 people. 



The skulls described in this, the first part of my memoir, are sixty-four in number, 

 and include specimens from the hill tribes of the North-east frontier of India and from 

 Burma. For purposes of comparison I have also given tables of measurements of skulls 

 from China and Siam. 



Hill Tribes. 



Before I commence the description of the skulls of the Hillmen, it may be well to 

 preface the anatomical details with some reference to the localities from which the 

 crania were obtained, as well as the names which have been given to the places and to 

 the people who dwell in them. 



In entering on the consideration of the savage and barbarous tribes who inhabit 

 the wide range of mountainous country which lies south and east of the river Brahma- 

 putra and Assam on the one hand, and north and west of Burma on the other, we are 

 confronted by differences in the nomenclature employed by those who have explored 



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