1910-11.] Anatomy of the Head of the Australian Aboriginal. 607 
Amongst the primitive inhabitants o£ the American Continent the 
available data of dissections are but few. Chudzinski (6) has dissected the 
body of a Peruvian, and Fallot and Alezais (21) made an autopsy on the 
body of an American Indian. 
Of the less frequently obtained members of the Caucasian Race 
Chudzinski (6) has dissected the body of an Arab ( Hamito-semitic section ) ; 
and Bryce, amongst the Indo-European section , has recorded (12) the 
dissection of a native of Dacca in Bengal, the subject being an adult male, 
a Lascar on board ship. 
As there is also an active Anatomical Department in Cairo, it may 
safely be inferred that much has been done there on the bodies of Egyptian 
fellaheen, though as yet there are apparently no records except upon the 
brains. 
Sources of the Material of the Present Work. 
The material employed in the present investigation consisted of the 
entire heads of two Australian aboriginal natives from the Lower Murray 
in South Australia. Of these, one was the head of a male, aged 25 years, 
who had lived at Point MLeay, near the mouth of the River Murray, and 
who died from pneumonia in 1907. The other was that of a female, aged 
50 years, who resided at Murray Bridge, and who also died in 1907, from 
some unexplained cause. It is almost unnecessary to add that although 
both were pure-bred, both had lived under European conditions. 
Sectional and Reconstructional Technique. 
After death both corpses were injected with a strong solution of 
formaldehyde. In January 1909 the heads were removed from the bodies, 
frozen, and then sawn through into transverse sections, two centimetres 
thick, by means of an electrically driven band saw. Each section was 
washed and then photographed under water with a vertically directed 
camera. As it was desired to enlarge from the half -plate negative to life 
size the camera was screwed down to the floor and its position never 
changed during the whole of the photographic observations. 
After the photography of the surfaces of the several sections the sections 
were reimposed upon each other and the heads again reconstructed. In this 
reconstruction, and in order to compensate for the tissue removed by the 
saw — the thickness of which was known — sheets of paper were introduced 
between each section, and after the final reconstruction the auricular height 
was measured and compared with the same height as measured prior to the 
