182 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
with an admittedly impure race like the modern Italian than with supposed 
pure stocks like the Andamanese or the Tasmanians. 
7. A study of the mean values of all the observations recorded as shown 
by Cross’s method of dealing with such calculations proves that the average 
Australian is not such a highly evolved type as was the average Tasmanian. 
Interpretation of the Facts. 
Biasutti (25), in a recently published paper the original of which is not, 
unfortunately, available to us in Melbourne, has apparently devoted some 
attention to Tasmanian and Australian literature, and assumes therefrom 
that the Tasmanian is the older of the two types, was developed on the 
Australian mainland, and migrated thence to Tasmania. The Australian 
race has been developed from this primitive type and has preserved itself 
as a mixture, and by insular isolation. 
It is impossible for us, under the circumstances, to say whether Biasutti 
regards his theory as either new or original ; but it is hardly necessary to 
add that it is neither one nor the other, and we only notice the work at all 
for the simple reason that its author revives the opinion that the Australian 
aboriginal is a mixed type resulting from a cross, presumably with the 
older and more primitive Tasmanian type ; and this, be it noted, is the only 
theory which fits the facts adduced in this, and our other papers, as also 
certain other well-known ethnological, cultural, and linguistic data. 
Professor Sergi of Rome has recently published a most important mono- 
graph on the racial affinities of the Tasmanian and Australian, under the 
title “ Tasmanier und Australier ( Hesperanthropus tasmanianus spec.) ” 
(26). We consider ourselves indeed fortunate that the amount of detailed 
work in our present paper has so far delayed publication as to enable 
Professor Sergi to be first in the field, and this for reasons which will shortly 
be apparent. 
In this work Sergi has availed himself of the Tasmanian material 
recently made available by us in our “ Dioptrographic Tracings in Four 
Normae of Tasmanian Crania ” (5), as also of certain crania in Cambridge 
and elsewhere, and of the recent valuable contributions of Turner (11) and 
others. Of our own work Sergi states that he prefers to use the skull 
tracings delineated in the publication just referred to, because they are 
exact dioptrographic outlines in four normae of the skulls recorded, and 
adds that when a sufficient number of crania are so studied, their outlines 
can easily replace direct observation on the skulls themselves. 
From a study of these crania Sergi deduces the fact that they are 
