Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/25

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INTRODUCTION.
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shallow water deposits, like those of India. The great similarity of forms certainly suggests continuity of coast line between the two regions, and thus supports the view that the land connection between South Africa and India, already shown to have existed in both the lower and upper Gondwána periods, was continued into cretaceous times."

By Huxley[1] the races of mankind are divided into two primary divisions, the Ulotrichi with crisp or woolly hair (Negros; Negritos), and the Leiotrichi with smooth hair; and the Dravidians are included in the Australoid group of the Leiotrichi "with dark skin, hair and eyes, wavy black hair, and eminently long, prognathous skulls, with well-developed brow ridges, who are found in Australia and in the Deccan." There is, in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum, an exceedingly interesting "Hindu" skull from Southern India, conspicuously dolichocephalic, and with highly developed superciliary ridges. Some of the recorded measurements of this skull are as follows:—

Length 19·6 cm.
Breadth 13·2 cm.
Cephalic index 67·3  
Nasal height  4·8 cm.
Nasal breadth  2·5 cm.
Nasal index 52·1  

Another "Hindu" skull, in the collection of the Madras Museum, with similar marked development of the superciliary ridges, has the following measurements:—

Length 18·4 cm.
Breadth 13·8 cm.
Cephalic index 75  
Nasal height  4·9 cm.
Nasal breadth  2·1 cm.
Nasal index 42·8

  1. Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals, 1871.