CRANIOLOGY OF THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 373 



was the smallest in the external dimensions of length, height, and circumference ; whilst 

 No. 7, which had the greatest internal capacity (1430 c.c), had large external dimen- 

 sions in length, height, breadth, and circumference. 



Comparison with Tasmanian Skulls in other Collections. 



As collections of Tasmanian skulls in several museums have been described by 

 eminent anthropologists, I purpose to compare my specimens with those previously 

 recorded. By way of preface, I shall state where these skulls are to be found. 



Owen, in his descriptive catalogue of the osteological series in the Museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons of England,* gave brief notes of nine Tasmanian crania at 

 that time in the museum. In Flower's catalogue of the same museum measurements, 

 in some cases short descriptions, are given of the specimens, which are now twenty in 

 number,! two of which are associated with skeletons. Of these seventeen are adults, 

 nine males, seven females, but the sex of one is not stated ; whilst two others are youths 

 and one is an infant. This museum also now contains the splendid collection 

 formed by Barnard Davis, catalogued independently : J fifteen are Tasmanians, nine 

 males, to one of which a skeleton belongs, and six are females. The characters of 

 the skulls, both in the Davis and the Surgeons' collection, have also been generally 

 described by J. G. Carson in a chapter in Ling Roth's treatise on the aborigines 

 of Tasmania. The British Museum of Natural History at South Kensington 

 possesses an adult male skeleton which formerly belonged to the Anthropological 

 Institute. In the collection of crania in the Museum of the Army Medical 

 Department, formerly at Fort Pitt, Chatham, afterwards at Netley, but now at 

 Millbank, four skulls were catalogued by Dr G. Williamson as natives of Van 

 Diemen's Land. Of these, only two, an adult male and a youth, can be regarded 

 as Tasmanian. § 



In 1872 M. Topinard published a critical study of the Tasmanian skulls in the 

 museums in Paris, which contain nine specimens, five adult males, three females, and 

 a youth of eleven years, and MM. De Quatrefages and Hamy have made the 

 same crania the basis of an elaborate chapter in their great work Crania Ethnica. In 

 1862 Barkow figured the vertex and occipital surface of an adult Tasmanian skull in the 

 museum at Breslau,|| and additional details of its form, dimensions, and character have 

 been subsequently given by Wieger in his catalogue IF of the Anthropological Collection 

 in that museum. 



* London, 1853. 



t 1st edition, p. 198, 1879 ; 2nd edition, edited by C. Stewart, p. 337, 1907. 



I Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 267, 1867, and Supplement, p. 63, 1875. 



§ Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, vol. xxiv., 1857. The skulls are numbered in Williamson's cata- 

 logue Nos. 445, 446, 58, 59. On visiting the museum at Millbank a short time ago, Colonel Wardrop, the Commandant, 

 kindly gave me permission to see the collection. Nos. 445, 446, have strong Tasmanian characters, and in 446 the 

 wisdoms had not erupted and the basi-cranial synchondrosis was not osnified. No. 58 has apparently been lost. 

 No. 59 is evidently, as Dr Williamson stated, not distinctively Tasmanian. 



|| Comparative Morphologic, Breslau, 1862, Plates x., xi. IT Katalog, Museum, Breslau, 1884. 



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