288 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



Tlie facts on which this opinion rests I take as exact ; but it rests 

 also on a preconceived idea, which, for my parr, I have King com- 

 bated, namely, that in quaternary Europe there was only one 

 race of men. Starting with the ethnogenic theory, that the diver- 

 sity of the human race is produced by the inliuence of time and 

 circumstances, the holders of the above-mentioned opinion admit 

 that the typical diflerenccs ought to be less and less as we look 

 back to past ages; and when the polygenists ol)ject that the sepa- 

 ration of the principal groups of races was already complete in 

 the earliest historical times, they are told that it was not in those 

 times, so close to our own, but in the immense and incalculable 

 I^receding periods that the div^ergencies from the original type 

 were numifcsted. Reduced to these terms, the questi(m of the 

 unity^ of the human race is adjourned to the time when palajontology 

 shall have discovered the remains of primitive man, or at least 

 relics of the races of the quaternary epoch. The monogenists 

 sui)pose that these races, separated from us b}' thousands of ages 

 perhaps, and for certain infinitely nearer to original man than the 

 most ancient of the historic races, ought to present, if not an abso- 

 lute uniformity, at least a manifest convergence toward the type 

 of the common mould whence, they believe, all the races came. 



•' It comes to this, however (and it is usually the case), that 

 facts begin to contradict a preconceived hypothesis. The quater- 

 nary race of Dordogne (Cro-Magnon) differs from the quaternaiy 

 race of the Belgian caves, as much at least as dissimilar modern 

 races difter one from another. The contrast is complete, not only 

 when we look at the conforniiation and volume of the head, but 

 also if we look at the form and dimensions of the bones of the 

 limbs." 



FORMER CONNECTION BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND ASIA. 



In the recently published work of Mr. A. R. Wallace, on the 

 "Malay Archipelago," the author maintains that the Asiatic con- 

 tinent at a former period extended much farther eastward, and 

 Australia farther westward, than at present, and were probably 

 separated by the strait of Lombok, one of the Timor islands, 

 dividing the island of this name, supposed to have formed part of 

 Australia, from Bali, another existing island, believed, with Java 

 and Sumatra, to have formed a part of the Asiatic continent. 

 This theory is strongly supported by data from physical geogra- 

 phy, zoology, botany, and ethnology. This Indo-Malayan re- 

 gion, including the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and 

 Bali, is surrounded by a shallow sea; another shallow sea sur- 

 rounds the Papuan region, and a deep one the island of Celebes, 

 the Timor group, and the Moluccas, forming his Austro-Malayan 

 region. The Australian fauna extends to Lombok, the Asiatic to 

 Bali, and in the Timor group the fauna and flora are transition 

 types ; as the latter are separated from each other by a deep sea, 

 it is naturally inferred that the islands must at some time have 

 been connected together ; without stating that Timor was actually 



