3 o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As in all our preceding world maps, we have to do with the 

 aboriginal and not the imported peoples. Our data for North 

 America apply to the Indians alone, before the advent of either the 

 whites or negroes. These latter depart in no wise physically from 

 the types whence they were derived. It appears that most of 

 Asia and both the Americas are quite uniformly straight-haired. 

 At the other extreme stands Africa, and especially Papua and the 

 archipelago to the southeast of it, which as far as the Fiji group 

 is known as Melanesia, or the " black islands." This map strikingly 

 corroborates the evidence presented by our other world maps, show- 

 ing the distribution of the head form and the skin color. Generally 

 speaking, the aphorism holds that the round-headed people are 

 also round-haired. The black-skinned races are, on the other hand, 

 generally long-headed and characterized by hair of an elongated 

 oval in cross section. Physical anthropologists, to be sure, dis- 

 tinguish several subvarieties of this curly hair. Thus, among the 

 Bushmen and Hottentots at the southern tip of Africa, the spirals 

 are so tight that the hair aggregates in little nubbles over the 

 scalp, leaving what were long supposed to be entirely bald spots be- 

 tween. This is known as the peppercorn type, from its resemblarice 

 to such grains scattered over the head. And in Melanesia the tex- 

 ture is not quite like that of the main body of the Africans; but for 

 all practical purposes they may all be classed together. 



The remaining tints upon our map denote the extension of the 

 wavy textured hair, which is generally intermediate in cross section, 

 varying from ribbonlike to nearly cylindrical shape. There are 

 three separate subdivisions under this head. Two of these, the 

 Polynesian and the Australian, are most certainly wavy-haired mon- 

 grels, derived from intermixture of the straight-haired Asiatic races 

 with the extreme frizzled type of Melanesia. This latter is by all 

 authorities regarded as the primitive occupant of the Pacific archi- 

 pelago, and of Indonesia as well. Among the Malays, and such 

 hybrids as the Japanese, the Asiatic type preponderates ; in the Aus- 

 tralian peoples the other element is more strongly represented. 

 Tasmania is quite distinct from its neighboring continent. Isolation 

 perhaps has kept it true to its primitive type. The Polynesians and 

 Micronesians seem to be compounded of about equal proportions of 

 each. Of course, all sorts of variations are common. The peoples 

 of the Pacific are peculiarly aberrant in this respect. Some islands 

 are characterized by quite lank and coarse-haired types; some 

 have the frizzled hair stiffened just enough to make it stand on end, 

 producing those surprising shocks familiar to us in our school- 

 geography illustrations of the Fiji islanders. 



What shall we say of the European races, the third of our inter- 



