224 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY iv 



to themselves, they are wholly unacquainted with 

 bows and arrows. 



It is but a step, as it were, across Bass's Straits 

 to Tasmania. Neither climate nor the charac- 

 teristic forms of vegetable or animal life change 

 largely on the south side of the Straits, but the 

 early voyagers found Man singularly different from 

 him on the north side. The skin of the Tasmanian 

 was dark, though he lived between parallels of 

 latitude corresponding with those of middle 

 Europe in our own hemisphere ; his jaws projected, 

 his head was long and narrow ; his civilization was 

 <*. about on a footing with that of the Australian, if 

 not lower, for I cannot discover that the Tasmanian 

 understood the use of the throwing-stick. But he 

 differed from the Australian in nis woolly, negro- 

 like hair ; whence the name of NEGRITO, which has 

 been applied to him and his congeners. 



Such Negritos differing more or less from the 

 Tasmanian but agreeing with him in dark skin 

 and woolly hair occupy New Caledonia, the New 

 Hebrides, the Louisiade Archipelago ; and stretch- 

 ing to the Papuan Islands, and for a doubtful 

 extent beyond them to the north and west, form a 

 sort of belt, or zone, of Negrito population, inter- 

 posed between the Australians on the west and the 

 inhabitants of the great majority of the Pacific 

 islands on the east. 



The cranial characters of the Negritos vary 

 considerably more than those of their skin and hair, 



