752 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not, then, authorized to believe that the Neanderthal skull was one of 

 an idiot, or of any exceptional being not possessing the ethnic charac- 

 ters of the race which lived at the same epoch with him. If there still 

 exists a race offering the same characteristics, there is no reason why 

 that race may not have existed in a geological age anterior to our own. 

 The Australian skull of the Neanderthaloid type, which is found, ac- 



FiG. 2. Bust of a Tasmanian. 



cording to Huxley, in Queensland, is also met as an erratic in New South 

 Wales. But a tribe, seeming to belong entirely to the race under 

 consideration, lived only in the environs of Adelaide ; and the seven 

 pieces from which the studies of the type were made are from that 

 locality. 



MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy conclude their study of the Aus- 

 tralian race with an enumeration of the cranial characteristics which 

 distinguish the Papuans from the Australians, and a comparison of 

 those races with the Dravidian races of the interior of India. Com- 

 mon characteristics appear in both groups, and resemblances may be 

 traced between the Australian and Dravidian languages. The evi- 

 dence, however, is still too slight to permit us to assign a common 

 origin to the races of New Holland and the black races of India. 

 La Nature. 



