CRANIOLOGY OF THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 377 



were less than 130 mm., and one has been recorded as low as 117 mm. The female 

 Tasmanian skulls, as in other races, were less in height than the males. In their external 

 dimensions the crania were, as a rule, moderate in size. 



The length- breadth or cephalic index 1 have computed in sixty-nine Tasmanian 

 skulls. The lowest recorded is 69*1, in the male skull (xxx. 6) in the University of 

 Edinburgh ; the highest 79"9, in a skull (No. 1105) in the Hunterian Collection in the 

 Royal College of Surgeons of England. The mean index in sixteen adults in the latter 

 museum is 76 *1, for Flower, differing from anthropologists generally, measured the 

 length from the ophryon to the occipital point, and excluded the glabella, so prominent in 

 Tasmanian crania ; had this been included, the individual as well as the mean index 

 would not have been so high, and more in accordance with my own and other measure- 

 ments. The mean index of the sixty-nine skulls was 74*7, and of these thirty-eight were 

 75 or less (dolichocephalic), nineteen were between 75*1 and 77*5, i.e. in the lower 

 term of the mesaticephali, approximating therefore to the dolichocephali ; twelve were 

 in the higher term of the mesaticephali, and no specimen was brachycephalic, i.e. numeri- 

 cally, 80 or upwards. As about five-sixths of the crania were numerically dolichocephalic 

 or closely approximated thereto, one is justified in regarding this as the group with which 

 the Tasmanian aborigines may be associated. With regard to the minority in the higher 

 term of the mesaticephalic group, seeing that the specimens in museums had been pre- 

 sented by various collectors, many of whom had had no special training in discrimin- 

 ating characters, it is not unlikely that some skulls have been regarded as those of 

 Tasmanian aborigines which may have been half-castes, especially if obtained after the 

 English occupation of the island. It is also possible that two or three skulls of 

 Polynesian islanders may have got accidentally mixed with the Tasmanians and have 

 been wrongly labelled. 



In previous memoirs I have considered the relation of length to height in several 

 hundred crania of different races, and I have now computed the length-height or 

 vertical index, not only in eight of the Tasmanian skulls described in this memoir, 

 but in fifty-seven skulls measured by the craniologists in charge of other collections. 

 Of the sixty-five adults, thirty-nine were presumably male and twenty-six female. The 

 vertical index ranged from 66*2 to 80, and the mean was 71 "1. In twelve specimens the 

 index was below 70 and may be termed low or chamsecephalic ; in forty-two it was from 

 70 to 75, metriocephalic (orthocephalic) ; in only six did the index exceed 75, so as to 

 give a high or hypsicephalic character to the cranial vault. The skulls, therefore, in 

 the majority of specimens, were moderately high in relation to the length, as is shown 

 in the mean index, 711, computed for the whole series. 



In sixty-five skulls the breadth exceeded the height in forty-eight specimens ; the 

 breadth was less than the height in twelve, and the breadth and height were equal in 

 five. I have elsewhere * called attention to the fact that in such well-pronounced 



* See references in my memoir on the Craniology of the People of Scotland, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xl., part iii. 

 p. 599, 1903. 



