392 PRINCIPAL SIR W. TURNER ON 



eacli other by short sea passages, though an extension eastward of the present Australian 

 continent would also have supplied a land route. 



New Caledonia was thus regarded as almost the limit of the eastward migration of 

 the Negritos, and also as the centre from which the Tasmanian migration started ; and 

 it will consequently be interesting to compare the crania of the New Caledonians with the 

 Asiatic Negritos on the one hand, and with the Tasmanians on the other. One can 

 scarcely conceive a greater cranial contrast than is presented by the skull of an 

 Andaman Island Negrito and that of a New Caledonian Melanesian. 



The University Museum contains eight skulls from the Andaman Islands. In the 

 Andaman Negrito the skull is small, rounded, brachy cephalic (mean C. Ix. 81*5) ; broad 

 in the parietal region owing to the prominent eminences : the basi-bregmatic height is 

 distinctly less than the greatest breadth (mean V. Ix. 75"7) ; the vault of the cranium is 

 neither keeled, nor roof-shaped, nor marked by a longitudinal fronto-parietal depression 

 on each side, but is somewhat flattened and with a low transverse arc ; the skulls are 

 cryptozygous. The forehead is smooth, and not retreating, with feeble glabella and 

 supraciliaries, but with distinct frontal eminences ; the nasion is not depressed, the 

 nose is not broad and flattened ; the nasal index is usually platyrhine ; the orbits 

 are moderately high in relation to the width, the index being mesoseme ; the 

 projection of the upper jaw is moderate, the facial profile is almost straight ; the 

 cranial capacity is small.* In the postero-parietal region a broad, shallow, median, 

 depressed area exists, bounded laterally by a low ridge on the parietal bone, and 

 along the middle of this depression the sagittal suture lies sunk below the general 

 plane of the vault. 



The New Caledonian skulls, on the other hand, are much longer, and relatively 

 narrower, markedly dolichocephalic (mean C. Ix. 70"l); the height is greater than the 

 breadth (mean V. Ix. 73) ; the vault is roof-shaped ; the skull is usually phsenozygous ; 

 in the males the glabella and supraciliaries are strong, the frontal eminences are not 

 prominent, the forehead is retreating ; the jaws are generally prognathic and the facial 

 profile is oblique. The Andaman Negrito and the New Caledonian are not unlike in 

 the proportion of the height to the width of the nose, and the dimensions of their 

 orbits give a mesoseme index. Both as regards capacity are microcephalic. But the 

 short, black, woolly hair of the Andaman islander and his dwarf-like stature, 4 ft. 8 in. 

 to 5 ft. in the men, contrast with the longer black hair, frizzled at the free ends and 

 capable of being dressed into a mop-like mass, and with the stature, 5 ft. 5 or 6 inches, 

 of the New Caledonian. If the assumption be correct that the New Caledonian is of 

 Negrito descent, it will have to be admitted that a remarkable modification, both in 

 external characters and in skull form, must have taken place since the Asiatic Negrito 

 was transplanted to an Oceanic habitat ; and it would, I think, be difficult to advance a 

 sufficient reason from the influence of climate, food, altitude, or other factors in the 



* See W. H. Flower's Memoirs, Jourv. Anthrop. Inst., November 1879 and November 1884. Also my description 

 in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xl. p. 113, 1901. 



