THE HUMAN SPECIES. 39 



Australia, since fossil remains of great Proboscideans 

 (Elephas angustidens ?) have already been discovered 

 in that soil; notwithstanding that the present mam- 

 malogy, perhaps with the only exceptions of the dog 

 and rat (both imported species), is entirely iniplacental, 

 with fewer congeners on the Asiatic than on the Ame- 

 rican side of the southern hemisphere. These excep- 

 tions, in the former direction, are chiefly confined to 

 those islands, great and small, clustered together on the 

 north of the Australasian group, and with more ques- 

 tionable connection, extending by New Guinea to the 

 south-east, including several Archipelagos and New 

 Caledonia, all notoriously encumbered with coral reefs, 

 ever the certain indications of comparative shoal waters, 

 and by Torres Straits passing to Australia proper ; for 

 the strait which severs it from New Guinea is almost 

 fordable in many parts, the ship channels being nar- 

 row and dangerous passes. The whole of the islands 

 in question, from New Guinea to beyond the Solomon's 

 group, bear a still greater appearance of cataclysis, 

 not by division so much as by submersion. Beside the 

 singular zoology already noticed, the equatorial islands 

 are the habitation of Simiadce, such as the Gibbons 

 (Hylobates), or long-armed apes, and of two or three 

 species of Pithecus, or Orang Outan, in stature as large 

 as men, and in strength superior to eight or more of 

 all the brute creation the genus which structurally ap- 

 proximates most to man, who to the eastward, and 

 in Australia, is himself represented by Papua tribes, 

 cannibals so low in the scale of humanity, that were it 



