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see how this may be, and how the effect would be somewhat 

 similar to what takes place in what is called " composite 

 portraiture." In the latter, for instance, only the more salient 

 points of say some 50 portraits are manifested, the result being 

 unlike any, and yet having some common resemblance to all. Sa 

 in the long-continued breeding of a pure race the more salient 

 features of the people would be the more likely to be perpetuated, 

 and the minor deviations or tendencies to evolution would stand 

 a greater risk of not being transmitted. If this view is correct, the 

 picture presented by the aborigines of Australia is not that of a 

 degenerate, but rather of a primitive race, a people whose chance& 

 of further evolution have been lessened by their extreme degree 

 of isolation. As in the composite portrait, individual peculiarities 

 would remain in abeyance and only the broader distinctive traits 

 of the race or species would appear. As regards the idea that 

 the aborigines of Australia are a degenerate or retrogressive race 

 it appears that reliance is based chiefly on certain rites and 

 customs to support the view. Mr. Helms, in the anthropological 

 contribution to the results of the Elder Exploring Expedition,, 

 after rejecting the shipwreck theory, favours the opinion that the 

 aborigines of Australia have become a retrogressive race, basing 

 the conclusion on their extraordinary sexual rites for retarding 

 an excess of population, on their complicated marriage laws, and, 

 besides, on other remarkable features of intellectual culture,^ 

 pointing to the supposition that they must be the remnants of a highly- 

 advanced culture. It seems improbable that isolation would cause 

 retrogression, although it would favour a race becoming stationary 

 and perhaps accentuated. Another explanation may be advanced 

 in place of retrogression. We possibly err in attaching a toa 

 high mental or intellectual value to the rites and customs men- 

 tioned by Mr. Helms, an error into which we do not fall in 

 considering the many wonderful acts and habits of various 

 animals. For instance, in considering the engineering skill of 

 the beaver in constructing dams, it is not necessary to suppose 

 that it had some Archimedean ancestor who had a genius for 

 construction and the application of physics. Nor, again, to sup- 

 pose that some ancestors of the honey-bee had a talent for 

 practical sociology, and elaborated the existing ethics and distri- 

 bution of labour which characterises ordinary hive-life. It is not 

 necessary to suppose that these are examples of retrogression. As 

 diflferent substances emit sounds characteristic of themselves when 

 struck, owing to some speciality in the arrangement and nature 

 of their molecules, so it is conceivable that organisms would 

 respond in varying ways to the constant action of stimuli. It is 

 possible in this way to see how by a slow process of evolution the 

 gradual adjusting of the nervous cellular structures with their 



