G4 MAMMALS. 



geneous; — so, one tribe of man, the Esquimaux, inhabits the same region. The Mediterranean 

 district has a sub-fauna and sub-flora of its own, composed of a mixture of European and 

 North African species ; the African coast ha^•ing the preponderance of African, the European 

 of Eui'opean types. We see something like this in the human inhabitants of the same district ; the 

 Europeans (Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, and Turks) are more swarthy and liker the Arabs than 

 their more northerly brethren. Other instances of tribes of men corresponding more or less to 

 the zoological districts in which they live might be quoted. We may thus fairly use the analogy 

 of such correspondence, between the regional distribution of man and the other animals, as an 

 argument, valeat quantum, for holding that there is such a relation between the human tribes of 

 Papua and Australia, because we find a similar relation between their other animals. 



Another circmnstance which has an important bearing on the probable affinity of the Papuans 

 and Australians is, that a rise of land of no more than two or three hundred feet woiild imite Papua 

 to Australia. We have already seen that while a rise of the same amoimt would \mite Java, Borneo, 

 and Sumatra with the Indian continent, it would still- leave them separated from the Papuan 

 region by a deep channel. 



The probability of the connexion of Papiia and Australia, and the fact of their marked separation 

 from the Indian continent being thus established, we may be more disposed to admit the force of 

 such resemblances as can be traced between their respective peoples. There is no doubt considerable 

 difference in their appearance. Most of the Australians have long, unfrizzled hair, and their 

 hollow cheeks and starved countenances give them less of the features of the African negro. We 

 have been so long accustomed to think of them as a race by themselves, that any proposition 

 which tends to destroy their theoretical position goes against our preconceptions. But examined 

 abstractedl}', we must abate our preconceived notions considerably. First, the homogeneousness 

 of the Australians is not absolute. Considerable variation occurs in their form. Th,ey have 

 not all lank, straight hair. The aborigines of Van Dieman's land on the one hand, and some of 

 the tribes on the north coast and in the interior of Northern Australia on the other, have frizzled 

 hair, Papuan features, and other negritan characters. So much so, that Mr. Earl* sets himself to 

 work to devise some theory of Polynesians or Papuans having engrafted Papuan blood on Australian 

 stock ; " for many circumstances," says he, " which I shall have to state more distinctly below, 

 would induce the supposition that the aboriginal inhabitants of this part of Australia very closely 

 resembled the Papuans of New Guinea, or, what is almost the same thing, the aborigines of Van 

 Dieman's Land." If any one part of Australia is once admitted to be peopled by the same race as 

 the Papuans, the general character of the race and their geographical position would lead to 

 the inference that the whole must be so too. 



The Nicobar Islanders and the Andaman Islanders are other isolated items of the great 

 black race. Without attempting to find relations for these. Professor Owen puts very clearly the 

 negative position that the latter do not belong to any of the neighbouring peoples (that is, the Hindoo, 

 Burmese, or Malay). He says : — " Why should ethnologists when they come to study the natives 

 of an insulated group of peoj^le like the Andamaners deem it necessary to determine to what contem- 

 poraneous people they were allied, on the assiunption that they had been derived from some existing 



* Earl, in " Journ. Geograph. Soc." xvi. 239. 



