88 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
The Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh has recently acquired some 
skulls from New Guinea, to which I may now refer. To the Rev. S. Macfarlane I am 
indebted for a specimen from Jarvis Island, 1 Torres Straits, and from a former pupil, Mr. 
A. F. Davenport, I have received two specimens from Tomara, Cloudy Bay, on the south- 
east coast. 2 The principal dimensions, along with those of the two specimens presented 
by Dr. Comrie, referred to on p. 86, and the Warrior Islander, are given in Table XVI. 
The Jarvis Islander and the adult from Tomara were both distinctly dolichocephalic ; 
whilst the young child from the latter place was brachycephalic, and its greater breadth 
was obviously due to an essential difference in the proportions of the skull, and not to a 
mere difference in age. In the Jarvis Islander the vertex was roof-shaped. The skull 
was smeared with a red pigment. A broad tongue of the squamous temporal, 19 mm. 
in vertical diameter, joined the frontal ; the antero-posterior diameter of the temporal 
fossa was only 102 mm. The vertical and cephalic indices were equal, and there was 
marked prognathism and an unusually low palato-maxillary index. In the adult Tomara 
skull a process of the squamous temporal, 6 mm. in vertical diameter, articulated with the 
right frontal, whilst two epipteric bones were in the left pterion. The Tomara child's 
skull had a steep descent from the obelion into the occipital region as if from artificial 
flattening. 
There is now on record also a considerable body of evidence to enable one to come to 
some conclusion as to the relations of the vertical to the cephalic index in the New 
Guinea skulls. The mesaticephalic Karons tabulated by MM. de Quatrefages and 
Hamy, in their Table XX., had for the male a vertical index of 74 '2 and for the two 
females a mean vertical index of 75*73, as against the cephalic indices 7 8 '8 and 79 '8 
respectively. The brachycephali from Rawak and Boni, in the same table, with a mean 
cephalic index 86*4, had a length-height index 827. A brachycephalic skull from 
Lydia Island, East Cape, Comrie collection, cephalic index 82, had a vertical index 76, 
and in a D'Entrecasteaux specimen from the same collection (my Table XVI.) 
these indices were equal. In my Warrior Island skull, and in the brachycephalic 
specimen in the Paris Museum, the cephalic index was much above the vertical, and these 
specimens were distinctly deformed from artificial flattening. The brachycephali and 
four of the mesaticephali from Kiwai and Canoe Island had the vertical index markedly 
below the cephalic, and in two only of the mesaticephali had the vertical index the 
superiority. Hence it would appear that in the crania with high cephalic indices the 
greatest transverse breadth was as a rule in excess of the basi-bregmatic height. 
In the dolichocephalic Papuan crania, on the other hand, an opposite condition 
1 This skull was procured from the Sacred House ou Jarvis Island. It was probably the skull of a head taken in 
battle. 
2 These specimens were collected by Lieut. Thos. de Hoghton of H.M.S. " Beagle." They were found in a 
native's house. 
