108 PROFESSOR SIR W. TURNER ON 



Busk described four specimens of their crania in 1862,* which, along with three 

 others, had their chief measurements recorded by Sir Wm. Flower in his catalogue 

 of crania in the Hunterian Museum. MM. De Quatrefages and Hamy figured 

 a skull in the Crania Ethnica, PI. LVIII. Barnard Davis has also recorded, 

 in the Thesaurus CraniorumJ the measures of ten Veddah skulls. George 

 Rolleston exhibited to the British Association in 1872 1 photographs of jungle 

 Veddahs, and also three skulls of this people in the Oxford Museum. Virchow has 

 described § three Veddah skulls, and has discussed the ethnological relations of the 

 people. Arthur Thomson has given an account || of the osteology of the Veddahs, 

 and has described, along with the other bones of the skeleton, the characters of nine 

 skulls in the Oxford Museum. He has also included in his tables of measurement 

 three skulls measured by Virchow, fifteen in the Museum of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons of England, and eleven in the collection of Barnard Davis. Much the 

 most complete description of the habits, distribution, and physical characters of the 

 Veddahs, and, indeed, of the natives generally of Ceylon, is contained in the 

 monumental work on that island by Paul and Fritz Sarasin,! who record, in addition 

 to an account of the skeleton generally, the measurements of eighteen male and four 

 female skulls from the interior of the island, and four male and four female skulls from 

 the coast districts ; also some young and imperfect crania. 



As regards the external physical characters of the Veddahs, the Sarasins have 

 contributed the fullest and most carefully analytical description, which I have 

 summarised as follows : — The colour of the face in men varies from a deep brown to 

 one with shades of lighter brown ; they have never seen a pure black skin, and those 

 that seem to be black, when closely examined are distinctly brown. The skin of the 

 breast is more frequently an opaque brown, though it may have a medium or reddish- 

 brown shade. In women there is not the same range in the brown tint, and on the 

 whole the skin is a clearer brown. The eyes have a brownish-black or opaque brown 

 colour. The hair of the head is black, coarse, wavy, tangled, and hanging down 

 to the shoulders or the back ; that of the beard and moustache is black and sparse. 

 On the body the hair is also sparse, though on the legs it may be abundant. 

 The face is tolerably broad and not high, the mean index of sixteen men being 80*7, 

 i.e., low-faced, chamseprosopic : the chin is pointed. The eyebrows are not strong, the 

 eyes are generally large, and there is no fold of skin connecting the eyelids at the 

 inner canthus (epikanthus), as in the Mongols. The nose has a deep pit in men at 

 the root, the bridge is not strong, and the alee have considerable breadth; in women 

 the nose is flatter than in men. The lips are large and the jaws are orthognathic. 



* Proc. Linn. Soc, 1862, vol. vi. 

 t Thesaurus Craniorum, 1867. 



| -Scientific Papers and Addresses, vol. i., Oxford, 1884, edited by W. Turner. 

 § " Ueber die Weddas von Ceylon," Abh. der K. Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, 1881. 

 || Journ. Anth. Inst., Nov. 1889. 

 IT ErgebnissenaturuissenschaftlicherForschungen auf Ceylon, 3d Band, die TVeddas von Ceylon. Wiesbaden, 1892-93. 



