388 PRINCIPAL SIK W. TURNER ON 



depression and three had the sagittal suture sunk behind between a pair of lateral ridges ; 

 whilst of eight skulls from West Australia five possessed similar features. 



In the Australians . the glabella and supraciliary ridges were usually more strongly 

 marked than in the Tasmanians ; the forehead was more receding ; the upper jaw was 

 more prognathous and in many Australian skulls the line of demarcation between the 

 floor of the nose and the incisive region had almost or entirely disappeared, so that the 

 nasal floor was directly continued into the incisive area of the maxilla ; the roof of 

 the mouth was more elongated, dolichuranic, and the premolar and molar borders of 

 the two superior maxillae were approximately parallel to each other ; the lower jaw was 

 stronger and the chin was more pronounced. In both races the skulls were phsenozygous, 

 platyrhine, microseme, and microcephalic in their internal capacity. 



From the consideration of these characters the skulls support the opinion, based on 

 the study by so many observers of the external features, that the existing aborigines 

 of Australia are distinct from the Tasmanians, although the presence, in a pro- 

 portion of the natives of South and West Australia, of skulls in which the height 

 was less than the breadth, the not unfrequent sunk sagittal suture, the more marked 

 parietal eminences, and the antero-posterior parietal depressions, point to a possible 

 amount of intermixture and racial affinity of these Australian tribes with the Tasmanians. 



Topinard, in his Etude sur les Race Indigenes de V Australie, came to the con- 

 clusion that in some parts of Australia, in addition to the general body of aborigines, 

 tribes existed with woolly hair, black skins, short stature, small round skulls, very 

 prognathic jaws, generally speaking with Negro characters, distinct in features from 

 the recognised Australian type, and inferior in intelligence. The woolly-haired race, 

 he thought, preceded the more straight-haired taller natives, and, probably when displaced 

 by them, took refuge, in part at least, in Tasmania. Topinard therefore inferred 

 that, when the displacement occurred, whilst reasons could be given for regarding the 

 Tasmanians as the remains of an autochthonous race, originally pure and distinct from its 

 neighbours, others equally valid might be alleged for their multiple origin as a cross 

 between a black autochthonous race and one of the invading groups of the great 

 Polynesian family. But whatever may be thought of the descent of the Tasmanians from a 

 woolly-haired Australian autochthone, there does not seem to be satisfactory evidence 

 of the presence in that great country of woolly-haired tribes at the present time, or 

 since Australia became known to Europeans. The balance of opinion is indeed in favour 

 of the view that throughout Australia the present natives generally conform to one 

 pattern in features, colour, and mental character ; though possibly on the coast, local 

 infusion of Papuan, Polynesian or Malay blood may from time to time have been 

 introduced amongst them. Indeed, as Giglioli has suggested, the idea of an existing 

 woolly-haired race in Australia is probably due to the loose way in which the terms woolly 

 and crisp have been used by explorers who were not anthropologists. 



The aborigines of Australia as known to the British colonists present in their affinities 

 and descent, equally with the aborigines of Tasmania, an ethnological problem. They 



