MINGLING OF RACES. 99 



culture, their canoes, and in many other respects, the Melanesian or 

 Papuan peoples display a far greater intellectual capacity than wc 

 find exhibited by the other members of the Ethiopian division. 



I cannot here enter at length into the question of the peopling 

 of the various groups of islands in the Pacific. It is a question on 

 which conclusions drawn from tlie linguistic and physical characters 

 of the inhabitants of these islands do not alwaj^s agree. Professor 

 Keane ^ holds that the three principal divisions of the varieties of 

 man are represented in this region ; the Caucasian in the Polynesians 

 inhabiting the islands of the south-central Pacific (Marquesas, 

 Samoa, Tonga, &c.) ; the Mongolian in the Micronesians of the islands 

 of the north-central Pacific (Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline, Ladrone 

 Islands) ; and the Ethiopian, or as he terms it the Dark T3'pe, in 

 the Papuans of the Western Pacific (to whom he restricts the name 

 Melanesian), New Guinea, and the adjacent islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago. It is to the different mingling of these three principal 

 types, that tlie widely varying characters of the peoples dwelling in 

 the several regions of the Pacific are attributed. According to Pro- 

 fessor Keane, the Polynesians of the south-central Pacific are almost 

 purely Caucasian, without a trace of Mongolian blood. This view, 

 however, is not supported by Professor Flower who contends that 

 the combination of the Mongolo-Malayan and Melanesian characters, 

 in var^'ing proportions and under varying conditions, would probably 

 account for all the modifications observ^ed among the inhabitants of 

 the Pacific Islands. 



The theory advanced by Professor Keane with reference to the 

 peopling of the Pacific Islands, is one on which some of my observa- 

 tions in the Solomon Islands, although not directly connected with 

 the subject, have some bearing. The primitive Negrito race, as now 

 exhibited in the Andaman Islander, according to this viev/ is the 

 original stock of all the dark races. From its home in the Indian 

 Archipelago, it extended westwards to Africa across the now lost 

 continent of Lemuria, and eastwards " across a continent of which 

 the South Sea Islands are a remnant — to become slowly differentiated 

 into the present Papuan or Melanesian peoples of those islands." 

 Subsequentl}'-, the Caucasians of ssuthern Asia, impelled before the 

 southerly migration of the Mongols from higher Asia, occupied the 

 islands of the Indian Archipelaoo and extended eastwards to their 



^ Vide a series of three papers ia vol. XXIII. of " Nature " en the Indo-Chinese and Oceanic 

 «laces. 



