'574 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



words : " The physical peculiarities distinguishing man from the animals 

 most nearly allied to him in organisation, and those which differentiate 

 human races one from another, are almost never the same." At the 

 -same time we shall not be surprised if this statement should prove to 

 he too exclusive, or not applicable in this particular case. 



A word may be said on man's affinities. It is now regarded as 

 fairly certain that his nearest relatives are the anthropoid apes, viz., 

 the gorilla, orang, gibbon, and chimpanzee. He possesses about 300 

 structural features in common with the gorilla and chimpanzee that 

 are not found in any of the lowest monkeys. Turner has pointed out 

 that the simian features are not all concentrated in any single race. It 

 has been allowed, however, that the Australian aboriginals have fur- 

 nished the largest number of ape-like characters. The more one in- 

 -.vestigates the truer does this statement prove to be. 



Recent advances in science have given two unexpected proofs of 

 affinity in entirely new fields. The homolytic test puts human blood 

 and the blood of the apes in the same class, and separates both from 

 the blood of the lower monkeys. Again, man and the anthropoid apes 

 are subject to a class of diseases that does not affect any other animals. 



Formerly the Australian aboriginal was classed with the American 

 negro because both possessed flat nose, protruding lips, projecting jaws, 

 and large-sized teeth. But this is just as if one should put the echidna 

 and the porcupine in the same order on account of their spines. The 

 characters mentioned are very variable, not only in the Australian 

 aboriginals and in the negroes, but in all races, and are just those 

 characters that change very rapidly in the individual and in the race 

 on account of changes in habits. Further, these are the characters 

 that would become especially developed in the apes and lower human 

 races on account of similarit}^ of food, habits, and surroundings. 



Topinard and others had concluded that Australia was originally 

 inhabited by a race of the Tasmanian type that disappeared before a 

 taller race that came from — somewhere. Flower and Lydekker {In- 

 troduction to the Study of Mammals Living and Extinct, 1891, p. 748) 

 thought the Australians were a cross between two already formed stocks. 

 Keane still holds that they are a blend of two or at most three different 

 elements in extremely remote times. 



Huxley held that the Australians were a homogeneous group. 

 Finsch, from extensive observations, concluded in 1884 that they were 

 all of one race. Alfred Russel Wallace, in 1893, pointed out the 

 aboriginal's resemblances to certain Asiatic races, and concluded that 

 the Australian aboriginals were really a low Caucasian type. 



Dr. Semon, in his work In the Australian Bush, English edition, 

 1899, p. 237, adopts the theory that the Australians and Dravidians — 

 primitive inhabitants of India — have sprung from a common branch 

 of the human race, and that the Caucasians have undoubtedly sprung 

 from the Dravidians. This makes the Australian aboriginal more 

 nearly allied to us than the comparatively civilised Malays, Mongols, 

 01 Negroes. Speaking popularly, according to this view the Australian 

 aboriginal, racially, would be the uncle of the Caucasian. 



