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to recognise his relations to other races, with whom he finally 
interbreeds. The innumerable mongrel races gradually fill up the 
‘spaces between originally so distinct types, and notwithstanding 
the constancy of character, in spite of the tenacity with which 
the primitive races resist alteration, they are by fusion slowly led 
towards unity.” Or he might have added, improved off the face 
-of the earth. So that everywhere we find that when a primordial 
type of man is brought in contact with more vitalised or plastic 
types it speedily appears to melt away and become extinct. The 
more primitive and purer the type the less is its chance of becom- 
ing modified by crossing with other types. This may be explained 
as due to the premature budding away or divergence from the 
parent anthropological branch prior to a more perfect general 
_-evolution. In other words they were less humanised at the time 
of their separate evolutionary parting. 
The aborigines of Australia are no exception to this rule, and 
it is simply due to their long protection by isolation that they 
still exist. For the same reason we see them accompanied still 
by birds and beasts—the kangaroo, the platypus, the emu— 
“ancient types,” as Andrew Lang says, “rough grotesques of 
Nature, sketching as a child draws.” But for this protection 
they would now have only been known as we know the smaller 
marsupials in England within the Oolitic period, and the remains 
of the autochthones of Europe that preceded and were driven 
before other invading races. As Nicholson, in his “ Manual of 
Zoology,” writes :—‘ In England, at the time of the deposition of 
the Stonefield slate, there must have been a fauna and flora very 
closely resembling what is now seen in Australia. The small 
marsupials prove that the mammals were the same in order; cones 
of Araucarian pines, with tree ferns, &c., occur throughout the 
Oolitic series; spine bearing fishes like the Port Jackson shark 
are abundantly represented by genera; and lastly the genus 
trigonia, now exclusively Australian, is represented by species 
which differ little from those now existing.” But whilst a general 
isolation from other human races has served as a protection, the 
various local isolations brought about by the physical features of 
the continent do not seem to have had much effect in producing 
different sub-types amongst the Australians themselves. The 
Australian type of face appears remarkably uniform, and it is 
difficult from an inspection of photographs to decide whether the 
individual is from the Northern Territory and Gulf of Carpentaria 
or from the McDonnell Ranges, or from the South coast. As a 
rule, in other divisions of the animal kingdom, the fact of isola- 
tion tends to the development of characteristics which become 
distinctive and specific. Take such genera as the land mollusca 
as an example. Schmidt in his “Doctrine of Descent and 
