604 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
XLII. — The Sectional Anatomy of the Head of the Australian 
Aboriginal: A Contribution to the Subject of Racial 
Anatomy. By Richard J. A. Berry, M.D. Edin. et Melb., 
F.R.C.S. Edin., F.R.S. Edin., Professor of Anatomy in the Univer- 
sity of Melbourne. (With Fourteen Plates.) 
(MS. received November 21, 1910. Read December 19, 1910.) 
So far back as 1867, Flower and Murie (1), in giving an account of the 
dissection of a Bush woman, stated that “ observations upon the comparative 
anatomy of the different races of Man have hitherto been confined too 
exclusively to the external characters and to the skeleton. With very few 
exceptions the arrangement of the muscles, vessels, viscera, and even of the 
brain and nervous system, constitute at present an unexplored field ; and 
numerous well-marked races of our species are passing away from the face 
of the earth without the slightest record being left on any one of these 
points. And yet in discussing questions, daily becoming of greater interest, 
relating to the unity or plurality of Mankind, and the amount of diver- 
gence of races, data such as these afford, whether their testimony be 
negative or positive, whether they tend to show absence or presence of 
variation from a given standard, cannot be neglected by the conscientious 
inquirer.” 
The above remarks make two points sufficiently clear, one being the 
vast importance of the matter, and the other the paucity of the material. 
Writing nearly forty years later than Flower and Murie, Duckworth (2) 
can only add that the “ material is still very scanty, although the observa- 
tions are daily increasing in number and accessibility.” 
As regards the amount of material available for the study of the racial 
anatomy of the softer parts, such as the brain, which can be obtained from 
the post-mortem room, there are far more data available than there are of 
other parts, such as muscles, vessels, or viscera, which of necessity imply the 
retention of the whole body. 
Literature. 
Of the soft parts in general we have most information of the hJEGRO 
Race. Chudzinski in his various writings (3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) has given us 
much information as to the soft parts of twelve members of the African or 
