12 Richard J. A. Berrj/ : 



existing geographical distribution of land and water. The 

 Negi'itos appear to have been much more widely spread than at 

 .present, and give every evidence of being a very primitive type ; 

 so that, ais Flower has suggested, they may be the primitive 

 stock from which the Melanesians on the one hand, and the 

 African negroes on the other, have been derived. Such an hypo- 

 thesis* of the relationship of the Negrito to the Melanesian would 

 explain, perhaps, the similarity of physical characters found to 

 exist between these races and the Tasmanians. Should this be 

 the case, the Tasmanians woul^, like the Andamanese, be the 

 remnants of a primitive stock from which the other Melanesians 

 have sprung.'' 



Huxley's opinion on this intricate cpiestion is as follows 



(16):- 



" In the Andamanese Island.*, in the Peninsula, of Malacca, in 

 the Philippines, in the islands which stretch from Wallace's line 

 eastward and southward, nearly irarnllel with the east coast <if 

 Australia to New Caledonia, and finally in Tasmania, men with 

 dark skin and woolly hair occur who constitute a special modi- 

 fication of the Negroid type — the Negritos. Only the Anda- 

 manese have presented skulls approaching or exceeding an index 

 of 80, all the other Negritos, the crania of which ha.ve been 



examined, are dolichocephalic The best known and 



most typical of these Eastern Negritos are the inhabitants of 

 Tasmania and of New Caledonia, and tho>e of islaaids of Torres 

 Straits and of Ne^v Guinea. In the outlying islands to the 

 eastward, especially in the Fijis, the Negritos have certainly 

 undergone considerable intermixture with the Polynesians : and 

 it seems probable that a similar cros.Mii<i with Mahiys may have 

 occurred in New Guinea." 



Flower (18) is brief and to the poiiil. He says: — "" The view 

 then that 1 am most inclined to adopt of the origin of the Tas- 

 manian is that they are derived from the same stock as the 

 Papuans or Melanesians." 



Giglioli (19), quoted by llowitt, concludes that the Tasma.nians 

 were members of the great Papuan family, and that they owed 

 their inferiority to the ccauplete state of isohition in which they 

 have existed ever since that very remote epoch. 



Mathew (20) apparently holds the like view, for lie thinks the 



