THE PEOPLING OF THE PHILIPPINES. 259 



whole question of the domain of variation is sprung with imperfect 

 satisfaction on the part of those travelers who give their attention 

 more to transitions than to types. Among these are not a few who 

 have returned from the South Sea with the conviction that all criteria 

 for the diagnosis of men and of races are valueless. 



Analytical anthropology has led to other and often unexpected 

 results. It has proved that just that portion of South Sea population 

 which can apparently lay the strongest claim to be considered a 

 homogeneous race must be separated into a collection of subvarieties. 

 Nothing appears more likely than that the Negritos of the Philippines 

 are the nearest relatives to the Melanesians, the Australians, the 

 Papuans; and yet it has been proved that all these are separated one 

 from another by well-marked characters. Whether these characters 

 place the peoples under the head of varieties, or whether, indeed, the 

 black tribes of the South Sea, spite of all differences, are to be traced 

 back to one single primitive stock, that is a question of prehistory 

 for whose answer the material is lacking.* Were it possible to furnish 

 the proof that the black populations of the South Sea were already 

 settled in their present homes when land bridges existed between their 

 territory and Africa, or when the much-sought Lemuria still existed, 

 it would not be worth the trouble to hunt for the missing material. 

 In our present knowledge we can not fill the gaps, so we must yet hold 

 the blacks of the Orient to be separate races. f 



The hair furnished the strongest character for diagnosis, in which, 

 not alone that of the head is under consideration; the hair, therefore, 

 occupies the foreground of interest. Its color is of the least importance, 

 since all peoples of the South Sea have black hair. It is more the 

 structure and appearance which furnish the observer convenient start- 

 ing points for the primary classification. Generally a twofold division 

 satisfies. The blacks, it is said, have crisped hair, the Polynesians and 

 light-colored peoples have smooth hair. But this declaration is erro- 

 neous in its generality. It is in no way easy to declare absolutely 

 what hair is to be called crisp, and it is still more difficult to define in 

 what respects the so-called crisp varieties differ one from another. 

 For a long time the Australian hair was denominated crisp, until it was 

 evident that it could be classed neither with that of the Africans nor 

 with that of the Philippine blacks. Semper, one of the first travelers 

 to furnish a somewhat complete description of the physical characters 

 of the Negritos, describes it as an "extremely thick, brown-black, 



* Note. — The reader must consult, on the identity of Negritos with 

 Papuans, A. B. Meyer in Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, Verhandl., Berlin, 1875, 

 p. 47, and the Distribution of the Negritos, Dresden, 1899, pp. 76-87. — Tk. 



t On Lemuria cf. A. R. Wallace, Geog. Distrib. of Animals, 1876, I, p. 272, 

 and Island Life, 1880, p. 394.— Tr. 



