Eveline Y. Thomson 
83 
Island lies to the east of New Zealand. According to their own traditions the 
Moriori reached their present home direct from Hawaiiki, so that they are not 
degraded Maoris but form a special branch of the Polynesian race. Never numerous, 
they were mostly slaughtered in the year 1838 — two years previous to the first 
British colonisation of New Zealand — by a party of Ngatilawa landed on the 
island by a whaler. This party enslaved the few survivors. Some years ago the 
remaining Moriori were stated to be reduced to fifty, and these were probably not of 
pure race*. There was nothing of special note in their occupations, habits or beliefs. 
Most of their life was utilised in procuring food, making garments and sleeping 
mats, or in shaping stone implements in which they showed considerable ingenuity. 
Fish hooks, fish spears and gaffs in constant use were cleverly shaped out of bone. 
The dwellings were ordinary conical huts constructed out of fern tree and thatched 
with toi-toi grass ; they were often sufficiently large to accommodate twenty or 
thirty persons. Some of them were ornamented with rude carvings, but most 
of these places have been demolished by the Maori, or perished from age, so that 
no specimens of their art are now obtainable. They lived peaceably, chiefly along 
the coast, spending their time as a rule in procuring supplies of fish, fern roots, 
nuts, wild duck, etc. Periodically they put off in rafts or large canoes for the 
hunting of seal and albatross. They are said to have had a confused notion of 
good and evil spirits and to have invoked numerous deities prior to any under- 
taking of importance |. In short, such accounts as we have of them do not 
seem to differentiate them markedly from the inhabitants of many other Poly- 
nesian islands. They stand out differentiated rather by their cranial than by 
their cultural characters. 
2. Measurements and Methods of Measurement. The measurements I have 
taken are similar to those adopted by previoiis biometric craniologists. They 
were made in the manner described by Fawcett {Biometrika, Vol. i. p. 416) and 
Macdonell {Ibid. Vol. iii. p. 200). The measurements are as follows: 
C = capacity taken with mustard seed, packing in skull and in measuring glass, 
not by our usual laboratory method of weighing as no fine chemical balance was 
available, the work being done away from the Laboratory. In the tables it will 
be seen that I have given two figures for each capacity. The seed was tightly 
packed into the skull and then tightly packed into the measuring glass. This is 
the standard method. It involves the great labour of double packing ; the second 
packing is avoided in our laboratory use of the balance. It occurred to me to be 
worth while trying loose packing in the measuring glass and correlating the results 
for tight packing and loose packing with the view of saving the time employed 
in the second tight packing on another occasion. The loose packing consisted in 
taking the seed from the skull, gently pouring it into the measuring glass and 
then giving a slight shake sufficient to obtain a level surface for reading. The 
* K. Lydekker, Living Races of Mankind, Vol. I. p. 72. 
t Extracted from Notes on the Chatham Islands by J. W. Williams, of Waitangi West, Chatham 
Island, Journal of the A?iihropological Insiiiuie, Vol. xxvii. p. 343. London, 1897. 
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