REPORT ON THE HUMAN CRANIA. 
Ill 
principally from the islands Majuro and Apaniama, measured by Krause, nine had a 
cephalic index below 75, and the remainder ranged from 75 to 79*5, and of these only 
six were above 77. In the sixteen skulls, the cephalic index of which was below 77, the 
vertical index exceeded the cephalic. In three of the crania above 77 the vertical index 
was less than the cephalic, and in two they were almost equal to each other. Three 
skulls in the Museum of the College of Surgeons measured by Flower had the cephalic 
index ranging from 73'1 to 76*5 ; the vertical index in one specimen was less, in another 
equal to, in a third greater than the cephalic. Five male crania in the Paris Museum are 
said by de Quatrefages and Hamy to have a mean cephalic index 73 '4 and a mean vertical 
index 77 '3 ; two female crania a mean cephalic index 75*8 and a mean vertical index 
79 '4. A large proportion of the Gilbert Island crania which have been examined possess 
therefore the hypsistenocephalic character of the Melanesian skull. Krause states that 
prognathism was prominent in only six crania. The study of the skulls of the Gilbert 
Islanders had convinced him that in them the presence of another type than that of a 
purely Papuan race could be recognised. The mixed racial characters of the people of 
these islands has also been referred to by Prof. Meinicke and Mr. A. R. Wallace. The 
people of Peru Island, one of this group, according to the Eev. G. Turner, state that 
their ancestors came from Samoa, and both persons and places have Samoan names. 
The Marshall Islanders, to the immediate north of the Gilbert Islands, have contri- 
buted but few skulls to museums. Two are in the Godeffroy collection, the one with a 
cephalic index 75 and a vertical index 79'3, the other with a cephalic index 77'4 and a 
vertical index 80*3. What little we do know of their crania points therefore to a mixture 
probably of the Polynesian with the Melanesian type. Krause states that these skulls 
approach closer to the Caroline than to the Gilbert Islanders. 
The Caroline Islanders are much more extensively represented in museums. Prof, 
van der Hoeven described in 1865 a collection of nine skulls, seven men and two women, 
believed to be natives of Oolea, one of these islands, 1 and an excellent abstract of his 
memoir was published by the late Dr. Barnard Davis. 2 The mean length of these crania 
was 182 mm., their mean breadth 126 mm., their mean height 142 mm. ; the mean 
cephalic index is therefore 69 "2, the mean vertical index 78. These skulls are long, narrow, 
and high ; they are hypsistenocephalic, and all possess this character. The Godeffroy 
Museum possesses forty-six skulls from this group, including one from the Pelew Islands. 
Eight skulls from Ponape and Nemma were (with one exception C.I. 76) distinctly 
1 Beschrijving van Schedels van Inboorlingen der Carolina-Eilanden, Amsterdam, 1865. 
2 Anthropological Review, vol. iv. p. 47, 1866. Mr W. P. Pritchard comments in the same vol., p. 165, on Dr 
Davis's memoir, and furnishes interesting information on the spiral tufts in the hair of the people of Oceania. He 
doubts whether the hair grows naturally in these tufts, with bare spaces between, and considers that the tufts are directly 
the result of an artificial process, and that both they and the " mop-head " can be and are produced both by the frizzly- 
haired Melanesians and straight-haired Polynesians. See on this point my observations on the hair of a New Zealand 
head in note on p. 108. 
