60 MAMMALS. 



which can bo traced between some of the plants and animals inhabiting widely separated jror- 

 tions of the supposed continent. 



On this subject Professor Owen says, " Certain it was that geologists had conceived that the 

 islands on the south of the present great Continent of Asia might be remnants of some antecedent 

 very distinct group of land, and naturalists (and he would more especially mention Sir J. Emerson 

 Tennent, who had paid so great attention to the fauna of Ceylon), had brought to their knowledge 

 a host of facts confirmatory of the idea that Ceylon was uot a dismemberment of India, but 

 part of a distinct and antecedent continent. In confirmation of that idea, they had the result 

 of the geological researches of Cautley, Falconer, and others in India, which seemed to show 

 that the Himmalayahs had risen, lifting up the fossiliferous beds on their present slopes 

 within comparatively recent geographical time, proving that India liad been the site of one of 

 the latest of these greatest systems of upheaving forces that resulted in the formation of new 

 continents." * 



We find, in the islands and coral islets surrounded by this unfathomable ocean, a race which 

 will in no respect harmonise with, and by no ingenuity can be made to fit into, the bro\^^l tribes of 

 the Malayan Peniusida and Islands, and still less the white races of Asia : this race is that known as 

 the Papuans, or Negritos. 



It is a new and distinct race, the like of which we have not previously met with. "We shall find 

 its like, however, if we turn to Africa, to the south of that point where a barrier as effective as the 

 deep sea of Celebes has interrupted the continuity of the land, viz. the Desert of Sahara. It does 

 not much matter whether we look upon that barrier as consisting of the present arid desert or a broad 

 sea occupying its place. Either barrier would probably be sufEcient to stop the extension of the 

 northern race into Africa south of the desert. Be that as it may, certain it is that something has 

 isolated South Africa from North Africa, for north of the desert we have one fauna and flora, and 

 south of it another ; and as to man, north of the Sahara we have the Arabs — undoubtedly a por- 

 tion of the white northern race — while south of it we have a new race, the Nesrro, as distinct from 

 them as at the other barrier the Papuans and surrounding nations are distinct from the Malays 

 and Chinese. 



And strange, too, both of these new races lying on the south side of these respective barriers 

 have much in common. Pioth are black, both have their haii- frizzled or woolly, both have broad 

 noses, thick and prominent lips, receding foreheads and chins, and what shoidd be the white of the 

 eye of a turbid yellow, or, as a recent writer phrases it when speaking of the aborigines of Eraser's 

 or Great Sandy Island, near Brisbane in Australia, " They appear to be very bilious, for what ought 

 to be the white of the eye is a dirty yellow." f Both have broad shoidders and deep chests, both 

 are inferior in the make of their lower extremities, having long lanky legs, sjilay feet, and cui'ved 

 shins, and of both it may be said, " From every pore of him a perfume falls." Two distinctions have 

 been attempted to be cb'awn between them, — the one that the colour of the African is black over 

 brown, while that of the Papuans is blue over black, or black with a bluish tinge, but this is now 

 known to be a mistake. The blue black of the Pajiuans is due to some artificial application, " pro- 



* Owen, in " Proceedings of Geographical Society," vol. that peninsula, than belonging to Sumatra or the Malayan 



vi. p. 44, 1862. As we go along, I think we shall see reason Peninsula. 



to doubt the suificieucy of Sir J. Emeraon Tenuent's t "Narrative of a Trip from Sydney to Peak Downs, 



arguments against the appurtenancy of Ceylon to India, Queensland, and back," bj E. S. H., London, 1864, p. 4. 

 and rather to look upon it as a dismembered portion of 



