BY WILLIAM E. ARMIT, F.L.S., F.R.G.S. 87 
not equally light—some are more, some less so. Their hair is 
not woolly, but is crisp. In the case of some individuals, 
especially women, who wore it short, it looked like smooth hair. 
There are aquiline noses here, but that shape is less common 
than at the Aru Islands and in the north-west of New Guinea. 
The people are smaller in stature, the head is rounder, and the 
outline of the face is more regular. 
“‘ They are a people living, as it were, in the age of stone; for 
although they know of iron by the name of “dim-dim,” they 
possess none, and all their instruments are of stone, or bone, or 
wood. From this it might be thought that they have kept 
themselves from all contact with foreigners. But, on the 
contrary, among all the tribes whom I visited, this one presents 
the greatest confusion of type. It is certain that two races, per- 
haps equally savage and primitive—although I am not able to 
say which two—have come into contact here and have produced 
the present population.” 
Here D‘Albertis seems to have been fairly puzzled by the 
diversity of what he calls type, but which to almost any one 
accustomed to the inland tribes would appear only as individual 
variations from some original type, variations due, I believe, to 
marriages between individuals of tribes far removed from each 
other, assisted, no doubt, by climatal and dietetic conditions. No 
one who has lived among these semi-savages has failed to 
observe the peculiar bias their females possess of being carried 
away by their emotions when admiring any object which has 
pleased their fancy. This is very noticeable when a visitor 
from some distant tribe arrives in a village. Should he be a 
comely man, from their point of view, which I need hardly say 
differs very widely from our own art-rules, they openly declare 
their admiration of the new comer, to the annoyance of their 
own admirers, who resent this sort of desertion in the most 
marked manner. I believe that slight differences in typical 
Papuans are due entirely to sexual selection, for I have noticed 
