No. 33.— 1886.] the veddAs of ceylon. 



465 



attention, as being characteristic features of the Vedda face. 

 Contrasted with the Sinhalese nose, which the old Chinese 

 reporters call a bird's beak, and in the description of the 

 Kandy beauty is compared to a hawk's bill, contrasted with 

 the delicate lips and orthognathous jaw, which we perceive 

 in Davy's drawings, we find certainly very striking 

 differences. 



Osteological investigation has, regarding the main facts, 

 confirmed these observations made among the living. Unfor- 

 tunately we have not been able to turn the skulls found in 

 Europe to much account in this direction, owing to the 

 difference in the published measurements, and least of all 

 indeed with the Sinhalese ; moreover, it is very unlucky 

 that the two skulls in my possession, of which one has 

 belonged to a young, the other to a very old man, show 

 great individual differences. 



In general the skeleton face of the Sinhalese is narrower 

 and longer than that of the Veddas. The former prove to be 

 leptoprosopic (index 89), the latter chamasprosopic (index 

 83-84). Corresponding to this the palate with the Sinhalese is 

 more long and narrow, with the Veddas rather short and 

 broad, with a prognathous jaw. In this last particular 

 the contrast to the Sinhalese is not so clear, since Mr. B. Davis 

 has made no reports concerning it, and of my skulls, one 

 is a strikingly prognathous one, although not having a 

 long alveolar process. Moreover, with the Veddas occurs 

 mesokonchy (84*6) and mesorrhiny (52), with many 

 individual aberrations, it is true ; so that with the women 

 we have more platyrrhine, with the men more leptorrhine 

 forms. On this point the Sinhalese material is very unsatis- 

 factory and quite inadequate. I will return to this latter, 

 although pretty much all concerning it is conjecture. I add 

 here only the comprehensive judgment of Mr. B. Davis* in 

 respect to the type of the Ceylonese and Indian population. 



* Davis. Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 158. 



