340 Was the Shdl of the MoHori ciHifieially deformed? 
He failed to note any deformation in either the Cambridge or the London series. 
If the Moriori practised as a race artificial deformation, it entirely escaped him. 
Lastly we may note that Scott, the first and one of the best investigators in 
this field, with a collection of 46 Moriori crania at his command, and acquainted 
with the practice of deformation in the New Hebrides, as well as close to the nien 
who had studied the Moriori customs at first hand, makes absolutely no mention 
of his material being artificially deformed ! 
Up to the time when E. Thomson undertook her examination of the 65 London 
Moriori crania, nearly 170 Moriori skulls had been handled bj^ anthropologists of 
considerable distinction, but they had one and all foiled to realise that artificial 
deformation was practised by the Moriori. 
Duckworth, I regret, gives no reproductions. 
Poll has some excellent plates, unfortunately not orientated to the Frankfurt 
horizontal*, but they show exactly the same features as Thomson's series, the 
receding frontal, the pentagonal norma occipitalis, the post-coronal depression, the 
sagittal crest, and the extraordinary massiveness and muscularity of the type. 
The mean frontal index -|- of the male Moriori cranium as given by Thomsonj is 
19'4, while the frontal indices of Poll's Br. 2 and Dr. 1 crania are 18'9 and 19"3 
respectively as determined from the photographs, Thomson's 765^-' has a frontal 
index of 18*4 of the same order as Poll's Br. 2, or if one skull is artificially 
flattened, so are the others judged by this test. In Quatrefages and Hamy's 
illustration — not photographic — this index appears to be 19"4, but it would be 
difficult to lay stress on what might be very largely influenced by the uncertainties 
of a lithographed drawing. 
Now what scientific line of criticism was open to Professor Giuffrida-Ruggeri 
if he suspected that the Moriori were a race who practised artificial deformation 
of the skull ? 
The best line of conduct would be to have waited before writing his memoir 
till he had been able to examine at first hand the collections at Bremen, Cambridge 
or London — I will not suggest that he should have travelled to New Zealand. The 
next best line would have been to have examined carefully the whole series of 
photographs — particularly those of the lateral aspect — already published. Thomson 
gives ten normae laterales, Poll two, and Quatrefages and Hamy's drawing might 
* Poll writes, S. 12-i "Die Photographien der Schadel sind in der halben Griisse angefertigt. Die 
Schadel sind niit Hilfe der WalJeyer'sclien Stativs in die deutsche Horizontale eingestellt ; dies gelingt 
ausserordentlich leiclit unJ bequem." The (iernian horizontal plane should make the plane through the 
lowest points of the orbits and the highest points of the auricular passages horizontal. It is hard to 
imagine this is so in Poll's norma lateralis in Fig. 3, still less in Fig. 6 of Tafel II. We think there must 
have been some error of orientation either in the original photograph, or in the trimming of the border 
by the engraver to make these photographs fit his plate. But the question of the tilt has an all-important 
bearing on the aspect of the norma lateralii; and influences the judgment of a superficial observer of the 
photograph as to whether a cranium looks "deformed." 
t Frontal Index = 100 x subtense of nasio-bregmatic arc divided by the nasio-bregmatic chord. 
+ Bioinetriku, Vol. xi. p. 95. 
