THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 449 



in the two Spy crania 46° and 47°. In Australians, Klaatsch found that it varied from 

 51/ to 62°, the mean being 57*5°. In eight Tasmanian skulls in the London and Paris 

 museums he stated that the bregma angle varied from 54° to 59°, with the mean 57*3°. 

 In my series of Tasmanian skulls I measured this angle in seven specimens, in which it 

 varied from 54° to 60°, with the mean 57'1°. Klaatsch's series and mine, comprising 

 fifteen skulls, closely corresponded in the range of variation, and the mean 57° may be 

 regarded as representing the bregma angle in the Tasmanian race. Klaatsch found that 

 in eight Australians the bregma angle varied from 50° to 62°, with the mean 56*8°. In 

 seventeen Australians which I measured the range was from 50° to 62°, and the mean 

 angle was 57 '1 — almost identical with the Tasmanians. In six Scottish skulls the 

 bregma angle ranged from 54° to 58°, and the mean was 56°. The variation in the 

 mean bregma angle as between the Tasmanian, Australian and Scottish crania was 

 only about 1°, and the Scottish skulls had the lowest mean of this series. 



As I have in this and several previous memoirs, for reasons which I have elsewhere 

 stated, taken as my base line the nasio-tentorial plane of the cranium, I have now 

 compared in the Tasmanians the angle formed by the nasio-bregmatic chord with this 

 base line. I found it to range from 52 to 58 - 5, the mean being 55*5. In seventeen 

 Australians it ranged from 53° to 62°, with a mean 58*4°. In six Scottish from 54° to 

 62°, with a mean 57*1°. The Australians had the highest angle, the Tasmanians the 

 lowest, and the Scottish were intermediate. In the measurements of the individual 

 skulls and the mean obtained, the bregma-nasio-tentorial angle did not differ to a 

 large extent from the bregma-glabellar-inial or bregma angle of Schwalbe, though 

 how far variations in these angles solved the problem of the frontal curvature is not a 

 settled question.* 



In each of these groups of skulls I took the perpendicular from the bregma-glabellar 

 chord, and also from the bregma-nasal chord, to the most projecting part of the outer 

 surface of the frontal. In seven Tasmanians the perpendicular of the bregma-glabellar 

 arc ranged from 16 to 21 mm., and the mean was 18 "5 mm. The bregma-nasal per- 

 pendicular ranged from 20 to 27, and the mean was 24'3 mm. In seventeen 

 Australians the bregma-glabellar perpendicular ranged from 11 to 25 mm., and the 

 mean was 18 mm. ; the bregma-nasal perpendicular ranged from 15 to 30 mm., and 

 the mean was 23 mm. A skull from North Queensland, in which the bregma- 

 glabellar perpendicular was only 11 mm., contrasted in its feeble frontal curve, in 



* For a criticism on the value of Schwalbe's bregma angle, of the elevation of the frontal bone through which its 

 upper border moves upwards and forwards, in modern as compared with palaeolithic man, and in consequence the 

 supposed displacement forwards of the bregma and the more vertical direction of the frontal bone, I may refer to an 

 important paper on the Australian forehead by the late Professor Cunningham in the volume of Anthropological Essays 

 presented to Professor G. B. Tylor, 1907. Cunningham objected to the value of the bregma angle, for not only is the 

 lower end of the bregma-glabellar line subject to displacement from variations in the glabella itself, but the upper end 

 is affected by changes in the other bones of the vault, independent of those due to elevation or depression of the 

 frontal bone. The attempt to ascertain the position of the bregma by dropping a perpendicular to the. base line and 

 calculating the relative distance from the glabella to the point of intersection is not satisfactory, as different degrees 

 of extension of the parietal and occipital regions, as well as differences in the growth of the frontal area, modify the 

 position of the bregma. 



