380 PRINCIPAL SIR W. TURNER ON 



Objections have, however, been advanced from time to time to the plan which he 

 pursued, and consequently to the results obtained, and his method has recently 

 been criticised with much force by Professor Arthur Thomson and Mr Randall- 

 Maciver, by whom another method of estimating prognathism has been suggested 

 and a trigonometer devised for obtaining it.* The Tasmanian skulls in the 

 Oxford collection have been tested by Miss Freire-Marreco with the trigonometer, 

 as well as by Flower's method, and a facial ang]e has been also obtained. The 

 method of Flower resulted in no skull, apparently, being orthognathic, whilst one fell 

 into the prognathic group and the rest were mesognathic, of which two were in 

 the higher terms of that group. As measured by Thomson's trigonometer, two of 

 these skulls were prognathic, two were in the higher terms of the mesognathic group, 

 and two were orthognathic. The facial angle in the Oxford collection ranged from 

 68° to 76°, and the projection in accordance with the standard of the Frankfort 

 agreement was prognathous. The different results procured by these methods on the 

 same skulls illustrate the difficulty of obtaining a precise estimate of the degree of 

 prognathism. 



The incisor teeth had not been artificially extracted in any of my specimens. In a 

 male Tasmanian skeleton from Flinders Island, in the Museum of the Royal College of 

 Surgeons, Flower thought that the two upper central incisors had been removed 

 during life, and similarly that in a female skeleton the four upper incisors had been 

 extracted. Barnard Davis considered that there could be no doubt that the teeth 

 in these skulls had been punched out, as is the practice with some Australian 

 tribes, and as is common amongst the Sandwich Islanders, for the alveolar process 

 was absorbed and wholly effaced. In no other collection has a similar condition 

 been described, so that the practice of extracting the incisors during life was 

 exceptional. La Billarmere, who saw in 1793 more than forty natives, stated that of 

 the people of Adventure Bay in some the upper middle incisor and in others both 

 upper incisors were wanting (p. 320). He seems to be the only naturalist who has 

 recorded this condition in the living native. 



Several observers had noticed the large size of the teeth in the Tasmanians. 

 Flower, in his paper " On the Size of the Teeth as a Character of Race," f placed them 

 along with the Melanesians and Australians in the Megadont group, and he gave the 

 mean dental index in the Tasmanians in both sexes as 48 "1, whilst that of the Australians 

 was 45*5. He had elsewhere stated J that they seemed to differ from these and other 

 kindred races in the tardy development and irregular position of the posterior molars, 

 which are frequently retained within the alveoli, or are set obliquely or irregularly, as 

 if owing to their large size they could not find room in the jaw. The specimens in the 

 Edinburgh museums do not, however, show irregularities or tardy development in the 

 molar series. 



* The Ancient Races of the Thebaid, Oxford, 1905. 

 t Journal Anthropological Inst., November 1884. 

 X Evening Lecture, Proceedings Royal Institution of Great Britain, May 31, 1878. 



