468 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



remarkable similarity in this respect, and though the 

 Aino is of a more refined type, there is nothing to indicate 

 any radical diversity of race between them.) 



Other fragments of the same great primitive type are 

 to be found in the Khmers of Cambodia, as well as in some 

 of the wild tribes of the same country and of Western 

 China, who have long been recognized as of Caucasian 

 type. The language of the Khmers is said to have some 

 affinities with that of the Mahoris, who are, as we have 

 stated in the last chapter, now generally recognized as of 

 Caucasian affinity, as are some of the tribes of Micronesia.^ 



The Australians are lota Caucasians. 



Of all these widely scattered Caucasian fragments we 

 must look upon the Australians as the lowest and most 

 primitive. Their antiquity is, in all probability, very 

 great, since they must have entered their present country 

 at a time when their ancestors had not acquired the arts of 

 making pottery or of cultivating the soil, of domesticating 

 animals, of constructing houses, or of fabricating the bow 

 and arrow. They thus affi)rd us an example of one of the 

 most primitive types of humanity yet discovered ; and if, 

 as I believe, they really belong to our own stock, we are led 

 to the conclusion that the differentiation of the three great 

 races of mankind took place at so remote an epoch that we 

 cannot expect to find any of the earliest connecting links, 

 while the amount of intermixture that has taken place 

 wherever two of these races come into contact renders their 

 actual delimitation still more difficult. 



The uniformity of the low stage of material civilization 

 in the Australians, though spread over so wide an area 

 differing considerably in climate and vegetation, and in 

 some parts very fertile, is the more remarkable, because 



^ In Mr. Richard Semon's work on Australia (p. 237) he compares 

 the Australians to the Veddahs of Ceylon and some of the Dra vidians of 

 Central India, and he considers that the Caucasians have descended 

 from these races. He adds: — " Several observers have already stated 

 that the physical features of the Australians, in spite of their so-called 

 ugliness and coarseness, may be decidedly compared to the lower 

 Caucasian type." 



I published this view in 1893, and have not myself seen it alluded to 

 at any earlier date. 



