412 PRINCIPAL SIR WM. TURNER ON 



of the Tasmania!} aborigines were interned ; it was obtained in exchange. — Morton 

 Allport, 1873." "No. 7bd, a female skull purchased from the collection of 

 Dr Meisser, 1868." It is marked ,; Habitante, van Diemen." 



In March of the present year a preliminary communication was made by Professor 

 Richard J. A. Berry and Dr A. W. D. Robertson, both of the University of Melbourne, 

 on a number of crania in public and private collections in Tasmania,* additional to 

 those described by Messrs Harper and Clarke and referred to in my previous 

 memoir. In a later communication t they reported that they had disinterred nine 

 skeletons of Tasmanians in a burying-ground adjacent to Big Oyster Cove, where a 

 settlement had been provided for the last remnant of the natives. They stated their 

 intention to publish shortly a description of the interesting relics of this extinct race. 



Skull with Skeleton, No. 310 (Plates I., II.). 



Up to the present time only four complete, or almost complete, skeletons of the 

 aborigines of Tasmania have been described. One, previously in the possession of 

 Barnard Davis, is now, along with two others, in the Museum of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons of London ; one, formerly belonging to the Anthropological Institute, 

 is now in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. A pelvis - in one of the 

 museums in Paris has been described by M. Verneau. \ I greatly esteem, there- 

 fore, the opportunity to examine the skeleton, No. 310, in the Royal Museum, Brussels, 

 which Professor Dollo has placed at my disposal for the purpose of description. 



Skull. — The skull was that of a male adult. It weighed, along with the lower jaw, 

 1 lb. 12^ oz. avoir. (800 grammes). 



Norma certicalis. — The cranium was elongated, 174 mm. in maximum diameter, 

 with prominent parietal eminences which contributed to its pentagonal outline. The 

 frontal eminences were well marked. A convex mesial triangular area was mapped out 

 on the frontal by a shallow depression on each side extending antero-posteriorly, the 

 broad base of the area formed a bregmatic eminence ; and the apex was between the 

 frontal eminences. Each lateral depression, bounded below by the frontal part of 

 the temporal curved line, passed backwards across the coronal suture on to the parietal 

 bone, as far as the upper limit of the parietal eminence, which, together with the 

 parietal part of the temporal curved line, bounded it below. The curved line 

 intersected the parietal eminence near the middle. The sagittal suture was denticulated 

 and its anterior third lay on the plane surface of the vault, but in its posterior 

 two-thirds it was depressed in a groove, bounded on each side by a ridge in the bone, 

 which formed the upper boundary of the antero-posterior parietal depression ; the 



* " Preliminary Communication on Fifty-three Tasmanian Crania, Forty-two of which are now recorded for the 

 First Time," I'ror. Hoy, Hoc. Victoria, xxii. (N.S.), part i., 1909. 



t "Preliminary Account of the Discovery of Forty-two hitherto unrecorded Tasmanian Crania," Anatomischer 

 Anzeiger, Bd. xxxv., No. ], j>. 11, August 10th, 1909. 



I Le Bassin duns les Sexes el dam les R«ce-% Paris, 1875. 



