102 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
it in tlic same degree. Crania pass by almost insensible gradations from the extreme 
form seen in Fiji or the Loyalty Islands to skulls which are of the New Guinea or 
Admiralty Island conformation. The hypsistenocephalic character seems to be an 
exaggeration of the Melanesian type, fostered perhaps by tribal interbreeding and 
hereditary descent amongst those who inhabit the mountainous regions, and those who have 
had little communication with the people of adjacent islands ; whilst in the inhabitants 
of the sea-coast, more liable to intermixture, the type form has not assumed such 
exaggerated proportions, or perhaps has become altered by mingling with other races. 
We may now pass to the consideration of the area occupied by the Mahori or brown 
Polynesian race. Ethnologists generally look to the Samoan and Tonga Islands as the 
central home of this race in the Pacific, from which it has diffused itself in several 
directions. 1 
The Tonga Islanders, so far as their skulls have been examined, are almost purely 
brachycephalic. Three adults measured by Prof. Flower are distinctly so, and six adults 
in the Godeffroy Museum, measured by Dr. Krause, are wholly so, with one exception, 
and that is mesaticephalic. The mean of the eight brachycephali is 84 '5, and the range 
is from 80 to 8 9 '4. Some children’s skulls from the Tonga Islands have a cephalic index 
of 90 - 6 and 92'9. Krause states that the skulls of the Tonga Islanders have a high, steep, 
broad forehead, flat and deeply descending occiput, parietal tubera laterally projecting, 
broad face, large eyes and little prognathism. 
The Samoan Islanders are not so uniformly brachycephalic. Two crania in the 
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons are undoubtedly so, C.I. 80’6 and 89 ; 
but only three out of thirteen skulls, mostly from Upolu, in the Godeffroy Museum 
have a cephalic index above 80 ; four are below 75, whilst six are mesaticephalic ; but of 
those, five are above 77, so that they approach the brachycephalic standard. It would 
look therefore as if a certain Melanesian admixture with the Polynesian people had taken 
place in Upolu. The vertical index in the Samoan dolichocephali was as in the Mela- 
nesian race distinctly higher than the cephalic. Whereas in the brachycephali the 
vertical index, though occasionally above the cephalic, as a rule was not so, and in some 
instances was markedly below it. Krause gives the cephalic index of a skull from the 
small island Futuna as 87, and Flower that of a native of Savage Island(Niue), lying 
midway between the Tonga and Samoan groups, as 83 '8. The Rev. G. Turner states 
that Savage Island is populated by light copper coloured natives very like the Samoans, 
and that their dialect is a mixture of Samoan and Tongan ; but Mr. W. L. Ranken , 
although recognising their Samoan affinities, considers that there is also an intermixture of 
Papuan traits. 
Crania of the Ellice Islanders, to the north-west of the Samoan Islands, are very 
1 See the accounts of the Samoans by the Rev. S. Whitmee ( Contemporary Review, February 1873) ; Mr. Pritchard 
and Mr. W. L. Ranken in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. vi. p. 224, and Rev. G. Turner in “Samoa,” London, 1884. 
