A character, with which I am very familiar, when measuring the heads of all sorts and conditions of natives of Southern India, is the absence of convexity of the segment formed by the posterior portion of the united parietal bones. The result of this absence of convexity is that the back of the head, instead of forming a curve gradually increasing from the top of the head towards the occipital region, as in the European skull figured in plate IIIa, forms a flattened area of considerable length almost at right angles to the base of the skull as in the "Hindu" skull represented in plate IIIb. This character is shown in a marked degree in plate IV, which represents a prosperous Linga Banajiga in the Canarese country.
In discussing racial admixture, Quatrefages writes as follows. [33] "Parfois on trouve encore quelques tribus qui ont conservé plus on moins intacts tous les caractères de leur race. Les Coorumbas du Malwar [Malabar] et du Coorg paraissent former un noyau plus considérable encore, et avoir conservé dans les jungles de Wynaad une indépendence à peu près complète, et tous leurs caractères ethnologiques." The purity of blood and ethnological characters of various jungle tribes are unhappily becoming lost as the result of contact metamorphosis from the opening up of the jungles for planter's estates, and contact with more civilised tribes and races, both brown and white. In illustration, I may cite the Kanikars of Travancore, who till recently were in the habit of sending all their women into the seclusion of the jungle on the arrival of a stranger near their settlements. This is now seldom done, and some Kanikars have in modern times settled in the vicinity of towns, and become domesticated. The primitive short, dark-skinned and platyrhine type, though surviving, has become changed, and many leptorhine or mesorhine individuals above middle height are to be met with. The following are the results of measurements of Kanikars in the jungle, and at a village some miles from Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore:--
=========================================================== | Stature cm. | Nasal Index. ==============+=======================+==================== | Av. | Max. | Min. | Av. | Max. | Min. Jungle | 155.2 | 170.3 | 150.2 | 84.6 | 105 | 72.3 Domesticated | 158.7 | 170.4 | 148 | 81.2 | 90.5 | 70.8 ===========================================================