THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 325 



skin, wide nostrils, thick lips, brachycephalic heads, and average stature in the men 

 4 feet 9 inches. 



At the same time a Dutch expedition, engaged in exploring the North-West River 

 district, situated east of the Mimika River, met with a similar tribe of pygmies in a 

 village on a slope of the Goliath mountain. A careful description of the people was 

 written by A. C. de Kock, surgeon to the expedition, which has added to our know- 

 ledge of the New Guinea pygmies.* A. J. P. v. d. Broek in a recent article t has 

 compared de Kock's written descriptions with those of the English explorers, and 

 has reproduced photographs of the people, whose physical characters strictly conform 

 to those of other pygmy races. What is especially interesting in connection with 

 this memoir is a description and drawing of the hair of the head and the pubic region, 

 in both of which the locks were slender and had a typical spiral twist. The 

 scalp lock closely resembled that of the Andaman islander drawn in fig. 19. The 

 individual hairs were oval in transverse section, the longer diameter 105m, the 

 shorter 75m, whilst the colour was generally dark brown. 



I now propose to compare the Ulotrichous hair of the Tasmanians, Melanesians 

 and Papuans with the Leiotrichous Australians, Maoris and other Polynesians, their 

 neighbours in the Pacific region. 



Australians. 



It is generally acknowledged that in the aborigines of Australia the hair is black, 

 relatively long, frequently straight, or with coarse natural curls, neither woolly nor 

 artificially dressed in pencil-like ringlets, nor expanded into a mop-like mass, nor 

 frizzled at the free ends (figs. 21, 22). The University collection is indebted to Dr Wm. 

 Ramsay Smith for heads from South Australia on which the hairy scalp had been 

 retained. In all, the hair was black and straight, each hair had its independent 

 course, and was not artificially dressed. In a man the hair did not exceed 4 cm. in 

 length ; in two women the length in one was 6 cm., in the other 10 cm. (4 inches). A 

 cutting of hair of a woman from Benalla, Victoria, was in wavy locks, 15 cm. long, 

 which could be stretched to 18 cm. (7 inches). Another specimen presented by 

 Dr Frederick Page was cut from the scalp of a native of Victoria plains, West 

 Australia ; it was a loose curl, 10 cm. long, which could be stretched to 18 cm. 



I am indebted to Mr Ling Roth for cuttings of hair from the aborigines of North 

 Queensland, collected by his brother Dr Walter E. Roth. The specimens were 38 

 in number, 29 of which were from adult males, 8 from adult females, and 1 from an 

 infant three weeks old. They had been obtained from natives of the Morehead, Nor- 

 mandy, Jack, M'Torr, Johnstone, Batavian, Musgrave and Lynd River districts, from 



* Tydschrift van het Koninklyk Nederlandsch aardrykskundig Genootschap. 



t "Ueber Pygmaen in Niederlandisch Sud-Neu-Guinea," Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 45th Jahrgang, p. 23, Berlin, 

 1913. 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. L. PART II. (NO. 10). 45 



