Eveline Y. Thomson 
97 
on either side of the sagittal suture giving rise to the sagittal crest, combined with 
great weight strike one at once. Anatomical peculiarities as will be noticed from 
my "Remarks" are frequent. Thus flattening of the obelion, parietal bulging, 
ossicles of the lambda are common ; epipteric ossicles were noted in 17 out of the 
63 crania. There were four cases of asymmetric foramina of which the most 
pronounced is photographed in Plate XIII. Marked inions or inionic ridges occur 
in several cases, while of rarer anomalies I noted an incisura crotaphitico-buccinatorus 
in one female, an ossicle of the coronal suture (Plate XV), and para-occipital 
processes articulating with the axis in other cases. Of non-congenital deformities, 
perhaps the most remarkable is a healed fracture of the mandible on the left side 
(Plates XX — XXII). Extreme attrition of teeth* was also noticed in a large 
proportion of the crania in this collection, a feature on which Dr Duckworth has 
already laid great stress in his paper. The general asymmetry of the skulls will 
be well realised, not only from a perusal of the remarks on the individual crania, 
but also by examining the measurements right and left given on the horizontal 
and transverse type contours. To sum up in the language of Flower and Turner, 
the Moriori are a megacephalic, mesatricephalic, metriocephalic, mesoseme (although 
close to the borders of microseme), leptorhine in male, mesorhine in female, ortho- 
gnathous, brachyuranic | race. They are thus mediocre in most cranial characters, 
but their non-mediocre features, those of megacephaly, orthognathy and brachy- 
urany, associate them rather with the more highly civilised than with the low 
races. As we have already said, the "primitive" character of the Moriori cranium 
does not lie in the same characters as differentiate the Australian aborigines or 
even the Negro from the European. It is a type of primitiveness hardly described 
by such characters as we have studied above. It is, perhaps, better considered 
in reference to the contours. 
* A similar attrition of the teeth was noticed in the prehistoric Egyptians and has been attributed 
by some to the use of stone mortars for grinding the grain. 
t Scott (loc. cit. p. 4) defines palato-maxillary index as 100 x palato-maxillary length/palato- 
maxillary breadth. But his lengths are always less than his breadths, just as are Turner's corresponding 
values for the four Moriori skulls acquired on the Challevger Expedition. Scott has accordingly, since 
his indices are over 100, really used, like Turner, the ratio of breadth to length. Turner following Flower 
measures the length as the distance from the alveolar point to the line drawn between the most posterior 
parts of the maxillary tuberosities. This is not exactly our palate length, but appears close to it in 
value. On the other hand Scott and Turner include in their palate breadth the alveolar arch and thus 
get a breadth very largely in excess of ours, and, we consider, no true palate breadth at all. To allow 
for the breadth of the alveolar arch, we have supposed it proportional to the palate breadth as measured 
in our manner. But we can only compare our breadth with Scott's breadth for our two series as we 
have not the two measurements in either case. There results for the mean breadth of the (double) 
alveolar arch at the second molars : 
Moriori males, 26-47, Moriori females, 22-79. 
We thus deduce for our Moriori the palato-maxillary index of Turner as 123 for males and 119 for 
females corresponding to the brachyuranic group. If we reverse the process, altering the above 
values in the ratio of Scott's palatal breadth for Maori to his palatal breadth for Moriori, i.e. subtract 
26-47 X 62-77/65-32 from 62-77 and 22-79 x 59-40/59-89 from 59-40 for males and females respectively, 
we obtain the values for the palatal breadths on our plan, i.e. 37-33 and 36-80 recorded in brackets under 
Maori in Table III, and the corresponding values of the palatal index. 
Biometrika xi 7 
