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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



as those "wliiob still do, or did till the recent European invasion, dwell 

 in the smaller islands which surround the north, east, and southern 

 portions of the continent, but that a strong infusion of some other 

 race, probably a low form of Caucasian Melanochroi, such as that 

 which still inhabits the interior of the southern parts of India, has 

 spread throughout the land from the northwest, and produced a modi- 

 fication of the physical characters, especially of the hair. This influ- 

 ence did not extend across Bass's Strait into Tasmania, where, as just 

 said, the Melanesian element remained in its purity. It is more strongly 

 marked in the northern and central parts of Australia than on many 

 portions of the southern and western coasts, where the lowness of type 

 and more curly hair, sometimes closely approaching to- frizzly, show a 

 stronger retention of the Melanesian element. If the evidence should 

 prove sufficiently strong to establish this view of the origin of the 

 Australian natives, it will no longer be correct to speak of a primitive 

 Australian, or even Australoid, race or type, or look for traces of the 

 former existence of such a race anywhere out of their own land. Proof 

 of the origin of such a race is, however, very difficult if not impos- 

 sible to obtain, and I know nothing to exclude the possibility of the 

 Australians being mainly the direct descendants of a very primitive 

 human type, from which the frizzly-haired negroes may be an offset. 

 This character of hair must be a specialization, for it seems very un- 

 likely that it was the attribute of the common ancestors of the human 

 race. 



D. The fourth branch of the Xegroid race consists of the diminu- 

 tive, round-headed people called Negritos, still found in a pure or 

 unmixed state in the Andaman Islands, and forming a substratum of 

 the population, though now greatly mixed with invading races, espe- 

 cially Malays, in the Philippines, and many of the islands of the Indo- 

 Malayan Archipelago, and perhaps of some parts of the southern por- 

 tion of the mainland of Asia. They also probably contribute to the 

 varied population of the great Island of Papua or Xew Guinea, where 

 they appear to merge into the taller, longer-headed, and longer-nosed 

 Melanesians proper. They show, in a very marked manner, some of 

 the most striking anatomical peculiarities of the negro race, the frizzly 

 hair, the proportions of the limbs, especially the humero-radial index, 

 and the form of the pelvis ; but they differ in many cranial and facial 

 characters, both from the African negroes on the one hand, and the 

 typical Oceanic negroes, or Melanesians, on the other, and form a very 

 distinct and well-characterized group. 



II. The principal groups that can be arranged around the Mon- 

 golian type are — 



A. The Eskimo, who appear to be a branch of the typical North 

 Asiatic Mongols, w^ho in their wanderings northward and eastward 

 across the American Continent, isolated almost as perfectly as an 

 island population would be, hemmed in on one side by the eternal 



