THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 437 



facial index was 90 '6 ; the face was relatively narrow and long, owing in a measure to 

 the depth of the symphysis menti, 33 mm. The upper jaw was orthognathic, index 

 94"8. The orbit was open, and the index 85*8 was mesoseme. The palate was short 

 and relatively wide, and the index 1297 was hyperbrachyuranic. 



The lower jaw had a deep body and symphysis ; the chin projected strongly forward ; 

 the angle was somewhat obtuse, and the ridges for the masticatory muscles were com- 

 paratively feeble. The teeth were not much worn. The cranial capacity, 1590 c.c, was 

 remarkably high even for a woman of a European race. 



When the characters above recorded are compared with those of the undoubted 

 Tasmanian skull, No. 310, they will be seen to differ so essentially, that it is not 

 possible to regard them as of the same race, although No. 75c/ may have been obtained 

 in Tasmania. The absence of the characteristic marks on the vault of the cranium, 

 the brachycephalic form and proportions, the very feeble glabella and superciliary 

 ridges, the want of depression at the nasion, the extremely prominent nasals, the 

 leptorhine nasal index, the orthognathic upper jaw, and the wide shallow palate, all 

 point to very different racial affinities. There does not, indeed, seem to be any valid 

 objection to regard this skull as that of a brachycephalic, orthognathic European, who 

 might possibly at one time have lived in Tasmania ; and the collector has labelled 

 it as an inhabitant only of the island, and not necessarily the skull of one of the 

 aborigines. 



Comparison with the Skulls of Australians, Europeans, Palaeolithic Man 



and Anthropoid Apes. 



I have already referred to the important memoir by Professor Klaatsch,* in which 

 he studied in the colonial museums the characters of the skulls of the aborigines of 

 Australia, chiefly collected in Queensland, and gave a detailed comparative statement 

 of their component parts. He discussed their variations and their possible evolution 

 from some previously existing ancestral type. I wish to thank him for the frequent 

 references which he has made to the chapter on the Australian crania and their varia- 

 tions in my Challenger Report,^ and I am gratified to read that my descriptions very 

 clearly demonstrated significant points and variations characteristic of the race, which 

 accorded with his own observations. He also made frequent comparisons of the characters 

 in Australian skulls with those in a female Tasmanian in the Sydney Museum, No. 404, 

 and in some Tasmanians in museums in London and Paris which he had studied before 

 he visited Australia. \ 



In Part I. of my memoir on the Tasmanians I compared the characters of their skulls 

 with those of Australians, Negritos, Papuans and Melanesians. In view, however, of 

 the more detailed criticism which Klaatsch has given on the Australian skull, I propose 

 to compare my series of Tasmanians with the Australians in regard to the char- 



* Op. cit., 1908. t Zool. Chall. Exp., part xxix., 1884. % Zeitsch.filr Ethnol., 1903. 



