CRANIOLOGY OF THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 391 



With three exceptions the height was greater than the breadth, and the mean vertical 

 index was 72. The glabella, supraciliary ridges and parietal eminences, though distinct, 

 were not specially prominent ; the nasion was not greatly depressed ; the cranial vault 

 was roof-shaped, but the fronto- parietal longitudinal depression was only faintly indicated 

 in a few specimens. Two skulls of this group showed indications of a depressed sagittal 

 suture in the postero-parietal region. 



The natives of the Fiji islands to the north-east of New Guinea have as a rule 

 marked Melanesian features. Their crania have been carefully described by several 

 anthropologists. Although a proportion of the skulls, collected on the sea-coast, possesses 

 mesaticephalic or occasionally brachycephalic proportions, where a Polynesian brachy- 

 cephalic intermixture is probable, the natives of the interior, as Flower has shown, are 

 strongly dolichocephalic. The crania are long, narrow, and high, as in the hypsisteno- 

 cephalic group of Barnard Davis. Five crania are in the University Museum, two of 

 which are hyperdolichocephalic (C. Ix. 66"8 and 657), with the basi-bregmatic height 

 much exceeding the greatest breadth; one is mesaticephalic (C. Ix. 76 '4), with a 

 vertical index 77"5, and two are brachycephalic (C. Ix. 81*9. 82*4), in one of which the 

 height is greater and in the other less than the breadth. In these skulls the sagittal 

 suture was not depressed, and only faint indications of a longitudinal fronto-parietal 

 depression were seen. 



The New Caledonian group of islands constitutes the most southerly land occupied by 

 people of a well-marked Melanesian type. Their crania have been described by several 

 French and British anthropologists, and most recently by Dr David Waterston, the 

 measurements of many of which he has kindly supplied me with from a collection in the 

 University Museum presented by Dr W. Ramsay Smith. Fourteen skulls in the museum 

 are characteristically Melanesian, long, narrow, and high, the vault roof-shaped, and the 

 parietal eminences not prominent. In three of the skulls an antero-posterior depression 

 in the parietal region extended, though faintly marked, on to the frontal. In three 

 skulls the sagittal suture was depressed in the post-parietal region. In six males the 

 glabella and supraciliaries were prominent, and the nasion was depressed. Except in 

 one with C. Ix. 77, the skulls were dolichocephalic; the mean cephalic index was 70 "1, 

 and as the mean vertical index was 73, the skulls were hypsistenocephalic. The mean 

 nasal height was 47 '3 mm., the nasal index in two was leptorhine, in six mesorhine, 

 and in six platyrhine, the mean index of the series being 52'9, scarcely platyrhine. 

 In five skulls the orbits were low with a microseme index, in seven the orbits were 

 rounded at the aperture, and in them the index ranged from 8 9 "7 to 9 7 "3, i.e. megaseme. 

 The mean orbital index of the series was mesoseme, 86'1. 



Professor Huxley, in his writings on the Distribution of Mankind, advocated 

 the view that the Negrito type spread eastwards from Asia into New Guinea, the 

 New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, the Fijis and New Caledonia. From New 

 Caledonia they migrated southwards to Tasmania, in all probability by inter- 

 mediate land, which he thought might have been islands now submerged, separated from 



