172 H. B. GDTPT, M.B.^ ON 



forty years among the Pacific Islands, and an essay on " The 

 Botany of Australasia " by the Rev. Dr. Woolls. 



The Author, in reply, said : With reference to the remarks 

 which Mr. Kirby has kindly made concerning my paper, I may 

 observe that the evidence of language does not siipport the idea 

 that Polynesia may have been peopled from a southern continent ; 

 for myself, I think we are scarcely warranted in introducing great 

 movements of upheaval or subsidence as factors in the distribution 

 of the races of man. The endemic element in the flora of Polynesia 

 is comparatively small, and the geological structures of such islands 

 as those of the Fijis and of Tahiti are not what we would expect 

 to find in the highest peaks of a continent. In conclusion, I have 

 to thank those present for the kind way in which they have 

 received my paper. 



The meeting was then adjourned. 



COMMUNICATION EECEIVED ON THE FOEEGOING 

 SUBJECT. 



Mr. John Frasee, LL.D., New South Wales, writes: — 

 Everyone who has examined the Oceanic languages — from 

 K. W. von Humboldt and Gabelentz down to the present hour — 

 notices the fact that there are many words, both root words and 

 derivatives, which the Malays, the black Melanesians, the brown 

 Polynesians, and the Micronesians have in common. Some 

 wr-iters have ascribed this to the influence of the wandering 

 Malay ; but I hold that the Malayo-Polynesian theory is utterly 

 wrong, for the Malays are a recent people in Indonesia ; the 

 eastern Polynesians are quite unlike them in physique and tem- 

 perament ; and it is impossible that the fierce Papuak natives of 

 New Britain, the Solomon Islands and the northern New Hebrides 

 should have adopted so many essential elements in their daily 

 speech from the Malays. I have long maintained that the true 



