A naturalist in Tasmania / by Geoffrey Smith.

  • Smith, Geoffrey, 1881-1916.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A naturalist in Tasmania / by Geoffrey Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the most beautifully illustrated books on natural history, was for several years the guest of Sir John Franklin, and did most of his work in Tasmania. We will conclude this sketch with some account of the characteristics of the native tribes of Tasmania, as far as they are known, and of the events which resulted in their extermination. The Tasmanians were of medium height and good physical proportions ; their colour was very dark brown or black and their hair golden brown and woolly like an African negro’s. In transverse section the hair is flat, resembling that of the negritic Andamanese. This characteristic separ- ates them sharply from the Australian natives, whose hair may be wavy, but is not woolly, and is oval in transverse section. The woolliness of the hair links them to the negritic population of New Guinea and the Pacific (Melanesians), and certain osteological characters, especially in the skull, confirm this view of the affinities of the Tasmanians. The skull has a very characteristic shape and can be easily picked out from a collection of Australian or South Sea Islander skulls by a number of dis- tinctive properties. From the Australian type it is altogether different; we miss in it the peculiar roof-shaped top, the massive overhanging brows, and the narrow elongated form (i.e. pronounced dolichocephaly) of the Australian (Fig. 5, No. 992), the Tasmanian skull (No. 1017) being almost globular in shape, not pronouncedly dolichoceph- alic, and with the brows not greatly projecting.
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