THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 



313 



12 cm., reached the eyebrows and the root of the nose; those on the back and 

 sides of the head were the longest and concealed the ears, cheeks, back of the 

 neck and reached the shoulders. 



New Hebrides. 



Melanesian aborigines with dark-brown or black skins, dolichocephalic heads, and 

 with stature in the men of about 5 feet 6 inches inhabit this group of islands. 

 Captain Cook visited them in 177 A* He described the men of Mallicolo as having 

 long heads, Hat faces, hair mostly black or brown, short and curly. The people of 



Fig. 4. — New Hebrides, Tanna. 



Erromango had the hair crisp and curly and somewhat woolly. He figured the head 

 of a man of Tanna, and said the hair was black and brown, tolerably long, very crisp 

 and curly, separated into slender locks around which a thin vegetable fibre was 

 wound to about an inch from the free ends. The locks were somewhat thicker than 

 whip-cord, and looked like a parcel of small strings hanging down from the crown of 

 the head to the back and shoulders. Prichard has also figured t from a drawing by 

 Captain Erskine a similar arrangement of the hair on a native of Aneityum. 



The Museum is fortunate in possessing several specimens from the natives of the 



* Second Voyage, vol. ii. p. 78, with plate. 



t Natural History of Man, vol. ii. pi. xxxvii. An account of Captain Erskine's voyage is given in his Journal 

 of a Cruise among the Western Islands of the Pacific, London, 1853. 



