1898-99.] Sir W. Turner on Sculptured Skulls , New Guinea. 569 
recorded of an intermixture of races in the eastern part of the 
south coast of New Guinea. 
The skull of the native of the Wandessa tribe from Geelvink 
Bay was that of an adult male. In its appearance and general 
dimensions it was on a larger scale than the skulls from the south 
coast of the island, and had belonged apparently to a well-built 
man. In the norma verticulis it was an elongated ovoid with steep 
side walls. The length- breadth index was dolichocephalic, 70*2, 
the basi-bregmatic height exceeded the breadth, the parietal 
longitudinal arc was much longer than the frontal and the occipital, 
and in all these characters it possessed Melanesian features. The 
glabella and supra-orbital ridges were distinct, the nasal bones 
were short, narrow, only slightly projecting, the nasal index was 
leptorhine, the floor of the nose passed smoothly into the incisive 
region of the upper jaw, which was mesognathous. The face was 
high in relation to the interzygomatic breadth, and came into the 
leptoprosopic group of Kollmann. The palato-alveolar arch was 
elongated and of dolichuranic proportions. The internal capacity 
of the cranium was considerable, so that the skull was meso- 
cephalic. 
MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy have described in their great 
work* four skulls of natives of the Wandessa tribe, to which this 
skull was also said to belong. Three males gave a mean length- 
breadth index 69*9, whilst the length-height index was 73‘5; the 
height, therefore, exceeded the breadth. In a female skull, how- 
ever, the length-breadth index was 77*7. Notwithstanding this 
exception, the cephalic index in the Wandessa tribe would seem 
generally to be dolichocephalic. In the magnificent series of 135 
crania collected by Dr A. B. Meyer, f 23 from Rubi on the main- 
land at the head of Geelvink Bay, and 112 from Kordo, in the 
island of Mysore, at the mouth of the bay, the majority were 
dolichocephalic, several were mesaticephalic, and only a small pro- 
portion were brachycephalic. In no specimen of this large series 
did there appear to be any decorative sculpturing on the skull, and 
as the crania from the south-east part of the island were also free 
from carving, it seems as if the practice were in a great measure, 
* Crania Ethnica, p. 25. 
t Mittlieilungen aus dem K. Zoul. Mus. zu Dresden , 1875, 1876, 1878, 
YOL. XXII. 27/7/99 2 0 
