37 G PRINCIPAL SIR W. TURNER ON 



the mean nasal height was only 44'3 mm. In the dimensions of the orbit the height was small in 

 proportion to the width, and the orbit was low or microseme. The mean palato-maxillary index 

 was 1166, i.e. horseshoe-shaped or brachyuranic. 



The three skulls in which the cephalic index was mesaticephalic were shorter in the parieto- 

 occipital region than those with dolichocephalic proportions, and corresponded with the form named 

 by Sergie pentagonoides planum. In each skull the anterior end of the sagittal suture was on the 

 summit of the roof-shaped vault, but further back the suture sank into a mesial depression, bounded 

 on each side by a lateral ridge on the parietal bone. The parietal eminences were distinct, and in 

 some skulls very prominent. A shallow antero-posterior depression was on the parietal between the 

 lateral ridge and the parietal eminence, but in three skulls the depression was not marked in the 

 frontal region.] 



Cranium. — The characters of the Tasmanian crania in various collections have been 

 described, in some cases with much detail, by G. Williamson, Barnard Davis, Flower, 

 Garson, Topinard, De Quatrefages and Hamy, Wieger, Harper and Clarke, 

 Duckworth, Klaatsch and myself, and several of the skulls have been figured. The 

 crania in the museums in Paris have formed the subject of elaborate descriptions by 

 M. Topinard, and MM. De Quatrefages and Hamy, who have pointed out their most 

 salient features. The vault, as a rule, was roof-shaped, the sagittal line was keeled, and 

 the vault sloped steeply down to the parietal eminences, which were well-defined, promin- 

 ent, and at times approximated to a conical form. Raised lines were said to extend from 

 before backwards in the area between the sagittal suture and the parietal eminences, 

 whilst grooves (gouttieres) extended in the same direction above the parietal eminences 

 to end about the middle of the parietal bones. The frontal eminences were distinct. 

 The supraciliary ridges and glabella were strong and overhung the orbit. The sagittal 

 suture was depressed in a groove in the mesial keel ; the vault behind the obelion formed 

 an almost plane surface as it sloped down to the lambda. The occipital pole had not, as 

 a rule, much projection ; the inion was feeble, and the suprainial area, in its relation to 

 the cerebrum, was small in proportion to the size of the nuchal or cerebellar part. Some, 

 if not all, of these characters were recognised by Barnard Davis, Flower, and Garson, 

 in the skulls in the important collection in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, 

 and by Harper and Clarke in those in the Hobart Museum. In my account of the 

 skulls in the Edinburgh museums, I have emphasised these characters as diagnostic of 

 the vault of Tasmanian crania, and I have expressed their importance in the description 

 and by the figure (page 369) and in the Plates L, II. 



The measurements published by myself and the authorities referred to enable one 

 to state the range in the dimensions of length, breadth, and height of the crania 

 and the proportion which these diameters bear to each other. As regards length, five 

 male skulls were said to be 190 mm., or even a little more in the longest diameter, but 

 the greater number were between 180 and 190 mm., and several were between 170 and 

 180 mm. In the greatest breadth, eleven males were 140 mm. or a little more, but the 

 majority were between 130 and 140 mm. The basi-bregmatic height gave a maximum 

 142 mm., but from 130 to 140 mm. was the rule; the female skulls measured 



