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evolved as the result of stimuli acting on certain organisms 

 endowed with a certain potentiality. As regards the individuals 

 using any specific language, it was a case of unconscious cere- 

 bration, and it was left for the learned comparative philologist to 

 explain the mechanism and the rationale. This is the only 

 conclusion that can be reached, for it would be absurd to suppose 

 that languages could have been consciously evolved by the peoples 

 using them. Returning, then, to the curious rites and customs 

 and laws of the aborigines of Australia, it does not seem 

 necessary to suppose any antecedent conditior- of greater culture 

 or civilisation to explain their existence. And this is more 

 particularly the case as there appear absolutely to be no other 

 vestiges of such supposed greater culture. Also, what is known 

 as '* unconscious cerebration" robs many intelligent acts of their 

 claim to be the result of conscious intent. 



I may shortly refer to the general custom of circumcision 

 amongst many of the tribes of the Australian aborigines. 

 This naturally is a custom closely associated in the mind 

 with Jewish rites, and the question arises, Can there be 

 any racial connection in the matter ? Some ethnologists 

 have advanced the opinion that in the remote past there 

 was a great African-Austro-Malayan centre of development 

 of the human race. At this period of extreme antiquity there 

 was probably a much greater distribution of land in the southern 

 hemisphere than at present, and that there probably existed 

 continents, now submerged, making communication between 

 Australasia and Africa much easier. A reviewer of Wallace's 

 "Malay Archipelago" in the "Anthropological Review" for 

 1869 writes: — "We shall not be surprised if in Madagascar 

 be found the key to the problem of the relationship of the 

 races of the Malayan Archipelago. If the dark and light tribes 

 of this great island are sprung from the same stock, the same 

 must be true of the dark and light races of the Archipelago. 

 While, therefore, in the aborigines of Australia we may perhaps 

 have the most direct issue of the primitive stock from which 

 these races have sprung, we see in the tribes of Madagascar the 

 secondary human centre from which both Malays and Papuans 

 have branched off." The Rev. W. Ellis was struck with the 

 Polynesian characterestics of the Hovas of Madagascar, and many 

 observers, amongst whom may be mentioned Prof. Huxley, have 

 maintained that the Papuans are more closely allied to certain 

 African than to other races. Tbe curious phenomenon has been 

 referred to by some writers of the existence side by side of dark 

 and light races at various remotely separated points around the 

 basin of the Indian Ocean. Such were the light and dark hill 

 tribes of India, the light and dark races of the Malayan Archi- 



