PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 475 
power. In this respect there is a great differenee between 
the Fijian and other Melanesian races. In New Hebrides, 
the Solomon Group, New Britain, and New Guinea, the 
chiefs have comparatively little influence or power, and in 
very few instances could any of them venture to order or 
command such arbitrary acts as a Fijian chief did with 
comparative impunity. In Fiji there was combined in the 
chief, in former days, the ferocity of the Melanesian savage 
with the despotic power of the Polynesian chief, and the 
result was the perpetration of some of the most horrible 
deeds of cruelty which ever disgraced humanity. The 
Rev. T. Williams has described the character of a Fijian 
as follows:—‘“ His feelings are acute, but not lasting; his 
emotions easily roused, but transient ; he can love truly and 
hate deeply; he can sympathise with thorough sincerity 
and feign with consummate skill; his fidelity and loyalty 
are strong and enduring, while his revenge never dies, but 
waits to avail itself of circumstances or of the blackest 
treachery to accomplish its purpose. His senses are keen 
and so well employed that he often excels the white man 
in ordinary things, in social diplomacy he is very cautious 
and clever, his sense of hearing is acute, and he has great 
command of temper and power to conceal] his emotions.’’ 
The New Hebrides, Solomons, New Britain, and New 
Guinea peoples are all of the Melanesian or sub-Papuan 
race, but is is extremely difficult to describe a typical 
Melanesian, as distinct from a Polynesian. The principal 
difference appears to be in the hair, which in the Melanes- 
ian and Papuan is decidedly frizzly, growing in little tufts 
or curls, which in mature life grow out either into long 
curls or into a frizzled mop. The pure Melanesian is often 
very little darker in colour than the Polynesian, but the 
general colour is from a deep sooty-brown to dark bluish 
black. Mr. Alfred Wallace, whilst holding strongly to the 
opinion that the Malays and Papuans are essentially 
separate and distinct races, believes “that the brown and 
the black, the Papuan, the natives of Gilolo and Ceram, 
the Fijian, the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, and 
those of New Zealand, are all varying forms of one great 
Oceanic or Polynesian race;’’ and in this opinion I agree. 
But I do not accept his explanation of what he calls “‘ the 
occurrence of a decided Malay element in the Polynesian 
language.” He states that it is “altogether a recent 
phenomenon originating in the roaming habits of the chief 
Malay tribes.” There is nothing more certain than this, 
that many of the Melanesian and Polynesian races in 
whose languages words common, both to them and to the 
