DIXON— A NEW THEORY OF -POLYNESIAN ORIGINS. 267 



the population of Melanesia and Australia. As a result of this 

 influx, the earlier Negrito type was largely absorbed, and survives 

 today as such, only in remote marginal areas into which it was 

 driven by the negroid immigrants. Following the negroid came the 

 Malayoid or Mongoloid wave, which, spreading over the area, ab- 

 sorbed and apparently quite submerged the preceding types and 

 blends in western Polynesia, and flooded in force into the central, 

 southern and northern portions, so that the Austro-Melanesian or 

 negroid type and its predecessor were left in any degree intact, only 

 in the marginal areas. These successive waves must not, however, 

 be thought of as rapid conquests, but rather, for the most part, as 

 slow drifts requiring generations or centuries for their completion, 

 with periods of halting, and as following moreover somewhat dif- 

 ferent paths. 



For much of the Polynesian area, the available data are ex- 

 tremely scanty, and conclusions must therefore be regarded as only 

 tentative. It is encouraging to learn that much fuller materials are 

 probably soon to be made accessible, as a result of the expeditions to 

 be sent out by the Bishop Museum in Honolulu beginning this 

 present summer. An analysis of this expected large body of ma- 

 terial, on the plan here followed will, it is believed, confirm and 

 greatly amplify the general conclusions reached. 



Harvard University, 

 April, 1920. 



