1913-14.] Curvatures of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Cranium. 129 
thus Tasmanian cranial work is no longer confined to those fortunate 
centres already mentioned, nor is it impossible now to apply modern 
methods to a race long extinct. It is therefore clear, in view of those 
enormous advantages, that Berry and Bobertson are correct when they say 
“ that all known existing Tasmanian crania, whether in Europe, America, 
or Australia, ought to be similarly recorded, and thus made available for 
study in all parts of the world, and for all time.” 
It will only be by the publication of similar works that any appreciable 
advance will be made in comparative craniological research. So many and 
varied methods of examination have been made on the Tasmanian and 
other crania, that it becomes imperative to secure some suitable method 
by which all the recorded observations may be referred to one common 
standard. 
It is, therefore, most important that similar works on the European 
and other races should be published, so that a detailed system of com- 
parative research may be instituted with the Australian and Tasmanian 
aboriginal crania. 
The morphology and general characters of the Tasmanian crania have 
been the subject of research by such investigators as Barnard Davis (4), 
Topinard (5, 6), de Quatrefages and Hamy (7), Flower (8), Williamson (9), 
Wieger (10), Klaatsch (11), Garson (12), Harper and Clarke (13), Duckworth 
(14), and Turner (15). Still more recently, Berry, Robertson, and Cross (16, 
17, 18) have made some important contributions to the subject, and have 
paid considerable attention to the biometric study of certain cranial obser- 
vations based on Schwalbe’s “ form analysis.” They selected this system 
of investigation in order “ to determine with some degree of certainty 
the final position of the Tasmanian with reference to the anthropoids, 
Pithecanthropus , Homo primigenius , and Homo sapiens, both extinct and 
recent.” They have succeeded, in some measure, in establishing the relative 
position of the Tasmanian aboriginal with the forms just quoted, by 
employing this investigational method. In view of these objects, it was 
absolutely necessary for Berry and Robertson to employ the glabella-inion 
plane as their working base-line, though they agree with Turner that this 
glabella-inion plane is not the best “ from which to estimate the length of 
the cerebral part of the cranial cavity,” for, in their opinion, the nasion- 
inion plane coincides more closely with the cerebral length than either the 
glabella-inion or Turner’s nasio-tentorial plane. 
As the nasion-inion is, therefore, important as a base-line, and as there 
is no reason why the present investigation should not employ it, I have 
directed some attention to it, as also to certain cranial proportions and 
VOL. xxxiv. 9 
