260 E. J. STATHAM, ESQ., ASSOC. M.INST.C.E., ON 
especially in the manner of initiating children into manhood ; 
while they must have spoken a language similar to those of the 
Papuans, or he would not have understood the explanations in the 
very short time at his disposal. 
So, without mentioning other evidence, we must infer that the 
immigrants who first peopled Australia must have settled over 
large tracts of Oceania besides. 
Commander Hearn, R.N.—Having lived in Australia for many 
years and having seen these natives in various parts of the 
country, from Port Albany, in Western Australia, to the most 
northern point of Queensland in Torres Strait, and also at Port 
Essington on the North West Coast, I cannot see the slightest 
reason for thinking that there is any connection whatever between 
the Japanese and the Australian natives, or even with the hairy 
Ainos, the Australian native not being a particularly hairy 
individual. 
The picture that we have before us does not represent the 
Australian native under normal conditions: I have never seen one 
so fat as this. Though many of them are well developed, they as 
a rule have no superfluous flesh about them, and the calf of the leg, 
which here appears so conspicuously, is generally one of their 
weakest points, the way in which they often sit being somewhat 
injurious to its development. They are extremely intelligent 
and clever as hunters and fishermen, and their perceptive organs 
ure wonderfully developed, no doubt from having for many 
generations been dependent for their food upon what they could 
catch. Over a large portion of the country there is nothing on 
which they can fatten. The few animals that they could catch 
would not help them much, while the dryness of the climate over 
a great part of the year prevents their obtaining anything like a 
liberal supply of vegetable food, which consists principally of the 
tuber of the wild yam. They have no idea of cultivation of any 
sort, never living at one spot for any time. The white woman 
whom we rescued from the natives at Cape York, in H.M.S. 
Rattlesnake, who had been living with the natives for some five 
years—during which time she had never seen a white man, and 
had almost forgotten her own language—gave us to understand 
that at times they were very short of food, though those living on 
the coast were better off, as they had fish when they could catch 
them. 
