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THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGES. 
eminences, and the mean index of eight skulls was 83*1. Of the fifteen crania collected 
by Dr. Comrie on the south-east coast of New Guinea, thirteen of which are now in the 
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and the measurements of which are 
given by Prof. Flower, 1 one from Traitor's Bay, near Riche Island, and another from 
Lydia Island, have cephalic indices respectively 81 and 82*5, whilst a third from the 
D'Entrecasteaux Islands has an index 77. The two remaining crania were presented by 
Dr. Comrie to the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh. The one from 
Possession Bay has a cephalic index of 68 ; this skull is markedly dolichocephalic. 
The other, from D'Entrecasteaux Island, has a cephalic index of 80*5, so that it falls 
within the numerical brachycephalic index. 2 Three other skulls in the College of 
Surgeons Museum, one of which is from an island in Torres Straits and two from Airds 
River, Gulf of Papua, have also brachycephalic proportions. 
Brachycephalic crania have also been procured on Warrior Island (Me Toud) in 
Torres Straits. I described and figured one with well marked parieto-occipital flattening 
from this island in 1880, 3 which had a cephalic index 88 and a vertical index 78 ; and 
MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy had previously described and figured from the same 
island crania with brachycephalic proportions. The well-known Italian traveller Signor 
D'Albertis has figured 4 a number of the skulls which he collected in his expeditions, and 
these have now been carefully measured and described by MM. Mantegazza and Regalia. 5 
Of the twelve crania collected on Kiwai Island at the mouth of the Fly River, ten had a 
length-breadth index of 76 or upwards, and of these four were upwards of 80, four 
between 77 and 80, and two between 76 and 77. Of the four crania collected on Canoe 
Island, a little higher up the same river, three had the cephalic indices 88 '9, 85'8, and 
80'8, whilst one was 76*1. 
From the examination of the living people of New Guinea, made by M. Jacquinot, 
from the casts of the head taken by M. Dumoutier, from the description of several of the 
crania given by MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy, from the configuration of the Warrior 
Islander skull described by myself, from the photographs of a skull from Canoe Island 
and one from Kiwai in the D'Albertis collection published by MM. Mantegazza and 
Regalia, there can, I think, be no doubt that the practice of artificially flattening the 
back of the head, and in the Canoe Island and Kiwai skulls the forehead also, prevails to 
a considerable extent amongst individuals, and, it may be, also tribes of the natives of 
1 Catalogue of Crania, p. 218, e. s. 
2 The measurements of these skulls are given in Table XVI., p. 89. 
3 Two Masks and a Skull from islands near New Guinea, Journ. Anat. and Phys., July 1880, vol. xiv. p. 479. The 
measurements are given in Table XVI. supra. In the British Museum is a prepared and decorated skull marked 
" Native chief of Nagheer Island, Torres Straits," with a wooden nose, and with the orbits filled up just as in the skull 
which I have described from Warrior Island. It was flattened both frontally and occipitally, and obviously brachy- 
cephalic. 
4 New Guinea, What I did, and what I saw, London, 2nd ed., 1881. 
5 Archivio per I'Antropologia e la Etnologia, lib. xi. Fasc. 2, 1881. 
