vi i.l METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 145 



with this one limitation, their crania present considerable 

 variations, some being comparatively high and arched, 

 while others are more remarkably depressed than almost 

 any other human skulls. 



The female pelvis differs comparatively little from the 

 European ; but in the pelves of male Australians which 

 I have examined, the antero-posterior and transverse 

 diameters approach equality more nearly than is the 

 case in Europeans. ; 



No Australian tribe has ever been known to cultivate 

 the ground, to use metals, pottery, or any kind of textile 

 fabric. They rarely construct huts. Their means of 

 navigation are limited to rafts or canoes, made of sheets 

 of bark. Clothing, except skin cloaks ' for protection 

 from cold, is a superfluity with which they dispense; 

 and though they have some singular weapons, almost 

 peculiar 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 characteristic 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 Aus- 

 tralian in his 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 Tasma- 

 nian, but agreeing with him in dark skin and woolly 



H L 



