610 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION GI. 



which can hardly be expected to have appeared to any pro- 

 nounced degree till the second generation, may be regarded as so- 

 much beating in the air. At the same time it points the way to 

 an important function of medical inspection in relation to the 

 State. By means of careful measurements according to some 

 uniform standard it should be possible to institute comparisons 

 between these different types of children according to the degree 

 of Australianship, so to speak, and so determine at the earliest 

 possible moment what influence the environment oi southern 

 land and skies is having on our race. The responsibility of 

 moulding and controlling the characters of that race falls on the 

 shoulders of the present generation. This has recently been 

 realised to be a matter of Federal importance. A white Australia 

 is only practicable if the Northern Territory or tropical Australia 

 can be successfully peopled by the white race. A party of Univer- 

 sity scientists is to visit the Northern Territory next winter, and 

 Dr. Anton Breinl, Director of the Tropical Institute of Australasia^ 

 is already beginning investigations on the subject in North 

 Queensland. What could be simpler, and at the same time more 

 important in this direction, than to institute at once, following: 

 the above classification of Austrahanship, a systematic investiga- 

 tion of the child life of the various States — a veritable stocktaking. 

 The British Anthropometric standards are available, so that 

 uniformity can easily be obtained. Further, the various systems 

 of medical inspection include in the examination measurements of 

 the child which a very little arrangement in this way could make 

 comparable. Recent investigations among New York aliens by 

 Professor Boas, of Chicago, seem to show that the head of the 

 child born in America is intermediate between the dolicho and 

 brachycephalic types, no matter whether his parents are both 

 dolichocephalic or both brachycephalic in type. The Australian 

 chest is said to be altered in character to the measurements avail- 

 able for the British Isles, so that there is every possibility that 

 measurements may demonstrate a new national type on the side 

 of physical development. 



Such work would, I believe, be of the greatest national im- 

 portance. 



