374 PRINCIPAL SIR W. TURNER ON 



In the Collection of crania in the Oxford University Museum are six adult skulls 

 which have been regarded as Tasmanian. Measurements by Dr Gabriel Farmer of this 

 series were included in Ling Roth's comprehensive treatise, and he abstracted the follow- 

 ing notes from the museum catalogue : — Nos. 1 and 2 were received in 1864 ; No. 3 was 

 given by the Rev. W. W. Spicer ; Nos. 5 and 6 were obtained in 1887 ; whilst No. 4, said 

 to have been brought by Captain Cook and to be Polynesian, was stated in Dr Ridd's 

 catalogue to be Tasmanian. As the skulls, according to Farmer's table of measurements, 

 ranged in the cephalic index from 70 '5 (No. 1) to 82 (No. 4), I asked my friend 

 Professor Arthur Thomson to ascertain if any further information regarding their 

 possible origin could be obtained, for the range given to the cephalic index gave one the 

 impression that skulls other than Tasmanians might have been included in the series ; 

 but his reply was that nothing could be added to the notes abstracted by Farmer from 

 the catalogue. Professor Thomson very courteously undertook to have the skulls re- 

 measured by two of his pupils, Mr F. H. S. Knowles and Miss Barbara W. Freire- 

 Marreco, who have checked each other's measurements and rechecked them with 

 the figures given in Farmer's table. As their results differ in many respects from 

 those given by Farmer, I have the consent of Professor Thomson to reproduce them in 

 Table II. of this memoir. 



In the Museum at Hobart Town, Tasmania, are nineteen crania, which at one time 

 were believed to be those of aborigines. They have now been carefully studied by Messrs 

 Harper and Clarke,* with the result that only twelve specimens, six males and six 

 females, one of which was much broken, were retained as genuine Tasmanians. Of the 

 remainder, three were probably half-castes, and three were incorrectly classed. W. H. L. 

 Duckworth has described an adult male skull, the facial part of another male, a 

 calvaria, and two lower jaws in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Cam- 

 bridge ; t the calvaria and one of the mandibles were presented by Mr James Bonwick, 

 the well-known writer on Tasmania. In the catalogue of the crania in the Museum 

 in Philadelphia, J. Aitken Meigs marked with a query, No. 1343, as "Tasmanian 

 of Van Diemen's Land," but without description or measurements. H. Klaatsch 

 has given, with figures, a series of comparative measurements of eight of the Tasmanian 

 skulls in the museums in London and Paris.J He also stated that Professor v. 

 Luschan, in his private collection in Berlin, has five Tasmanian skulls purchased 

 from the widow of Mr G. A. Robinson, who acted as Protector of the aborigines. 

 I am not acquainted with any description of these specimens, nor have I any informa- 

 tion of a Tasmanian skull said by Barnard Davis to be in a museum in Vienna. 



The crania catalogued in museums as Tasmanian, including those recorded in this 

 memoir, which have been studied and described by anthropologists, and the measure- 

 ments of which have been more or less fully recorded, are seventy-nine in number. 



* Papers and Proc. Roy. Soc. Tasmania, for 1897, p. 97, 1898. 

 t Journ. Anth. Inst, vol. xxxii., 1902 ; and Cambridge Studies. 

 1 Zeitsch. fiir Ethnologie, Heft 6, 1903. 



