6G PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



the megaseme group. The palato-maxillary index in one was mesuranic, in another 

 brachyuranic. The face in one was chamseprosopic, in the other leptoprosopic. In the 

 two males the mean capacity of the cranium was relatively high for an aboriginal race, 

 viz., 1425 c.c. ; in the possible female skull the capacity was 1250 c.c. 



Male Pahdrid or Hillmen of Rdjmahdl. Table I. 



Dalton, in the Ethnology of Bengal, devotes a section in his chapter on the 

 Dravidian tribes to the aborigines who inhabit the Rajmahal Hills. This range 

 extends from the banks of the Ganges to the Brrilrmani river and the boundary of the 

 Birbhum district, and is in the Santal Parganas district of Bengal. He also states that 

 in the Ramgarh Hills of the Birbhum district, and at the foot of the Rajmahal Hills, are 

 villages occupied by a tribe who call themselves Mal-Paharias, — the precise affinities of 

 which it is somewhat difficult to determine. As two skulls of aborigines marked Paharias 

 from Birbhum have come under my observation, it is convenient, from their possible 

 Dravidian affinities, to consider them in this section. The Malers are short in stature, 

 face oval, nose not prominent but broad below, and with the nares circular rather than 

 elliptical ; lips full, eyes not oblique. They dress as well as the peasants of the plains, 

 and the women wear a white skirt, a gay coloured square of silk over the right shoulder 

 and tied under the left arm. The hair is collected into a knot behind the head, with 

 two long locks hanging over the ears. They are apparently exogamous. Marriage is 

 either infant or adult, and widows can remarry. A special house is provided for the 

 bachelors, and another for the unmarried girls. They worship the sun and their 

 ancestors, and believe in the transmigration of souls. The dead are sometimes buried, 

 though, Mr Risley says, more usually cremated. They are hunters, but they also prac- 

 tise jhtim cultivation. They eat flesh as well as vegetables, and drink a fermented 

 liquor. The numerical strength of the tribe is said to be 18,506, though 30,838 use 

 the tribal language. 



In the collection in the Indian Museum are the skulls of two men, Nos. 558, 559, 

 from Birbhum, both of whom had died in the prison hospital. No. 558, marked 

 Dhobia Paharia, was that of a man said to be 80 years old, with an edentulous upper 

 jaw ; he had sustained a comminuted fracture of the frontal bone, the pieces of which 

 had subsequently united. No. 559, also marked Paharia, was named Rampoojar, and 

 aged 50. 



The skulls were not roof-shaped, but were somewhat flattened at the vertex, and 

 the outline was ovoid in the norma verticalis, though the cranium in one was not 

 specially elongated, and the side walls bulged somewhat in the squamous region. In 

 No. 558 the length-breadth index was 71 '9, dolichocephalic, and the parietal longitu- 

 dinal are greatly exceeded both the frontal and occipital ; the vertical index corresponded 

 with the cephalic. In No. 559 the length-breadth index was 767 in the lower term of 

 the mesaticephalic group ; in this skull the frontal longitudinal arc greatly exceeded 



