LIFE OF FLOWER 161 



therefore, regard them as little-modified descendants of 

 an extremely ancient race, the ancestors of all the 

 Negro tribes." 



On the other hand, it was suggested that long 

 isolation and restriction to a confined area might have 

 led to physical degeneration, so that the peculiarities 

 of the Andamanese type might be of comparatively 

 recent origin. 



Another interesting race to which Sir William 

 devoted special attention was the Fijians, who, as 

 already incidentally mentioned, offer the most extreme 

 contrast to the round-headed Andamanese, by the 

 extreme length and narrowness of their skulls. His 

 paper on the " Cranial Characters of the Natives of the 

 Fiji Islands," appeared in the Journal of the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute for 1880 ; and was illustrated, like the 

 one on the Andamanese, with carefully drawn figures 

 of typical skulls. After mentioning that nothing 

 definite was known with regard to the anthropology 

 of one of the islands of the Fiji, or Viti, group, the 

 author added that " with regard to Viti Levu, all the 

 evidence we possess shows that the people who inhabit 

 the interior of the island present in their cranial con- 

 formation a remarkable purity of type, and that this 

 type conforms in the main with that of the Melanesian 

 islands generally j indeed they may be regarded as the 

 most characteristic, almost exaggerated, expressions of 

 this type, for in * hypersistenocephaly ' (extreme narrow- 

 ness of skull), they exceed the natives of Fati, in the 

 New Hebrides, to which the term was first applied. 



" The intermixture of Tongans or other Polynesian 

 blood with the Fijian, appears to be confined to the 



