472 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
Bougainville natives are the best makers of spears, and 
there is a steady demand in the eastern groups for these 
weapons, whilst the western natives have an equal desire 
for the various kinds of shell money which are manu- 
factured by the eastern tribes. These facts will show that 
the influence of the physical features of the land, the 
localities in which the people live, and the natural pro- 
ducts of those places, exercise a great influence upon the 
character and habits of the people, and constitute no un- 
important part of geographical study. 
ETHNOLOGICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
I may at once state that in my opinion the different 
groups in the Pacific are not only closely connected to each 
other, but that the peoples who inhabit them, though 
differing widely in the stages of civilization which they 
have attained, are all descended from one common stock. 
This opens up the vexed question of the origin or habitat 
of these races, called respectively by the author of the 
various theories Malayo-Polynesian, Eastern Polynesian, 
Mahori Sawaiori, Papuans, Melanesian, Western Poly- 
nesian, and several other names. It is indeed a most 
difficult question, and I can only state here conclusions to 
which I myself have come, admitting at the same time that 
there are difficulties to the full acceptance of them which 
I do not feel competent to explain. 
I think it is extremely likely that there was originally 
one great race occupying these different groups, as far 
west at least as Borneo, and probably extending upon the 
mainland on the side of Siam, the Malacca Peninsula, and 
perhaps as far as Burmah, which probably at that time 
formed part of one vast continent. The traces of these 
people are, or have been, found in all the different groups, 
from the black races found in New Zealand by the original 
Maori colonists, and who were derisively called by them 
“black humara,’ to Western Malaysia, and also on the 
mainland. The Papuans of the present day, are the purest 
representatives of this race. In Malaysia, this pre- 
Malayan race was modified by admixture with the _ 
Turanian races of the mainland of Asia; and this consti- 
tuted the present Polynesian race, which still retains so 
much of its old Papuan element. This intermixture will 
probably account for some, if not all, of the differences 
which exist to-day between the brown and the black races, 
as they are found on the different groups. At this period 
