Earlier in the same year Flower had entered in some degree on the domain of ethnology by contributing to the _Journal_ of the Anthropological Institute a paper illustrating the “Mode of Preserving the Dead in Darnley Island and in South Australia,” figuring the mummified body of a Melanesian from the above-named island. Another paper of somewhat similar nature from Flower’s pen was published in the same journal for 1881, dealing with a collection of monumental heads and artificially deformed crania of Melanesians from the Island of Mallicollo, in the New Hebrides. These preserved heads have attracted the attention of Europeans ever since Cook’s visit to the island in 1774; and appear to be quite unique. “Whatever the special motive among the Mallicollese,” wrote Flower, “whether they are the objects of worship or merely of affectionate regard, it must be very difficult for a passing traveller without intimate knowledge of the language and of the condition of mind and thought of the people to ascertain; but the custom is obviously analogous to many others which have prevailed throughout all historical times and in many nations, manifesting itself among other forms in the mummified bodies of the ancient Egyptians, and which has received its most æsthetic expression in the marble busts placed over the mouldering bones in a Christian cathedral.” Reverting to 1879, we find in the _Journal_ of the Anthropological Institute for that year an important and interesting paper by Flower on the “Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman Islands,” a subject to which the author made a further contribution in the same journal for November 1884. In the first of these communications the author gave the results of the examination of nineteen skeletons and a large series of skulls, while in the second he was able to amplify these, and thus to render his averages more trustworthy by the details of no less than ten additional skeletons. As in all his other papers of this nature, Sir William first traced in considerable detail the history of European intercourse with the Andamanese, or “Mincopies,” as they were often called at one time, and then proceeded to point out the external and osteological features of these interesting and diminutive people. Relying to a great extent on the “frizzly,” or “woolly” character of their hair, Flower was fully convinced that these people belong to the Negro branch of the human family.