84 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



teristics of the various tribes, their customs, languages and 

 handicrafts. 



There is still much discussion concerning the limitation 

 of the term Papuan as applied to people, and even whether 

 it should not be dropped altogether, as Prof. Sergi suggests. 

 The Italian anthropologist extends the term Melanesian 

 not only to comprise the natives of all the Western Oceanic 

 islands including New Guinea and the adjacent islands but 

 also Australia. At present I adhere to what Mr. Ray and 

 myself have considered to be the most convenient course, 

 and employ the term Papuan for what appear to be the 

 autocthones of New Guinea. By Melanesians we under- 

 stand the present inhabitants of the great chain of islands 

 off the east of New Guinea and extending down to New 

 Caledonia. These terms are used to designate peoples, not 

 races ; neither are pure races, and at present we are unable 

 to gauge the amount of race mixture in either, or even to 

 state precisely what are their components. 



From the boundary of Netherlands New Guinea to 

 Cape Possession on the eastern coast of the Papuan Gulf, 

 and inland from these coasts, the natives are dark, frizzly- 

 haired Papuans, typically they are a dolichocephalic people 

 and rather short in stature. 



The Papuans also occupy the greater part of the south- 

 east peninsula of New Guinea ; but along the southern 

 coast line almost uninterruptedly from Cape Possession to 

 the farthest island of the Louisiades is an immigrant 

 Melanesian population, about whom I shall have more to 

 say presently. 



I will now enumerate a few facts which will clearly 

 bring out the essential distinction between these two 

 peoples. 



We have not at present a sufficient amount of data on 

 the physical characters of the two peoples by skilled obser- 

 vers to enable us to formulate what differences there may 

 be between them. There is no doubt that the Papuans are 

 more uniformly dark than are the Melanesians (I am now 

 referring solely to the Melanesians in British New Guinea) 

 and their hair is as constantly frizzly. Among the Melan- 



