X.—The Aborigines of Tasmania. Part III. The Hair of the Head compared with that of other Ulotrichi and with Australians and Polynesians

• Published in: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• Main Author: Turner, William
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1915
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; General Environmental Science; Bory; Pacific; esquimaux
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0080456800035961; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0080456800035961

A number of years ago I began to form and arrange in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh a collection of the hair of the head to illustrate the varieties in colour and character which exist in the Races of Men. In a classification of the races based on the colour and characters of the hair, anthropologists have usually adopted the suggestion made by Bory de St Vincent, and have divided them into two groups: Leiotrichi, with straight, smooth hair; and Ulotrichi, with woolly or frizzly hair. Each of these again is capable of subdivision. In this memoir I intend especially to examine the Ulotrichi, which comprise two well-marked subdivisions. In one the hair is very short, and is arranged in small spiral tufts, the individual hairs in which are twisted on each other, a mat-like arrangement of compact spiral locks closely set together being the result. In the other the hair is moderately long, the locks are slender, curled or spirally twisted in a part of their length and terminate at the free end in a frizzly bush-like arrangement. Ulotrichous hair is found in various African races, in the aborigines of Tasmania, New Guinea, the Melanesian Islands in the Pacific, in the Negritos of the Malay Peninsula and of some of the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago. The Leiotrichi are Australians, Polynesians, Mongols, Malays, Indians, Arabs, Esquimaux and Europeans.