128 
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
XL— A Study of the Curvatures of the Tasmanian Aboriginal 
Cranium. By L. W. G. Buchner, Victorian Government Re- 
search Scholar in the Anthropology Department of the University 
of Melbourne. Communicated by Professor R. J. A. Berry. 
(With Three Folding Tables.) 
(MS. received December 9, 1912. Read January 19, 1914.) 
The extinction of the Tasmanian aboriginal in 1876 closed, for all practical 
purposes, the further scientific study of this ancient and highly interesting 
race, and it appeared almost certain that our knowledge of this people 
would remain dependent on the earlier works of those who were fortunate 
enough to have studied them during life, and on the few remains housed 
in such fortunate centres as London, Paris, Edinburgh, Oxford, and 
Cambridge. 
Fortunately, just at the moment when it seemed most improbable that any 
further specimens of Tasmanian crania would be discovered — the number 
known to be in existence up to 1909 having been given by Turner as 
seventy-nine, — Berry and Robertson published in the Proceedings of the 
Royal Society of Victoria (1) and the Anatomischer Anzeiger (2) an 
account of a further discovery of fifty-two. This discovery, important 
though it undoubtedly was, would not materially have greatly advanced 
Tasmanian craniology, had not the dioptrograph and diagraph just been 
invented. By the use of the former ingenious and accurate instrument, 
Berry and Robertson were enabled to record the whole of their fifty-two 
crania — forty of which were absolutely new to science — in such a way 
as to make any craniological investigations on these skulls available in 
any part of the world. 
The great importance of this method was immediately realised, amongst 
others, by Professor Sergi of Rome, who hastened to avail himself of this 
unexpected increase in the wealth of Tasmanian material available, in order 
to study anew the form of the Tasmanian skull by means of his own 
highly original modes of investigation. The results have been made 
available to us in his recently published “ Tasmanier und Australier, 
Hesperanthropus tasmanianus , spec.” (3). 
The publication of Berry and Robertson’s Atlas has also made it 
possible for any investigator to apply any of the recently introduced 
craniological and morphological methods of skull analysis to the Tasmanian 
cranium, quite apart from the possession of the skulls or otherwise, and 
