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THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY OF TORRES Sigaits. 589 
possible to register accurately the point at which, with increasing pressure, a 
painful element is first perceived. The sensitivity to pain as thus determined 
seemed to be, roughly, inversely proportional to the delicacy of touch discrimina- 
tion in the series of individuals, and in the whole series the sensitivity seemed to 
be distinctly less than in the short series of white men observed. 
Similar series of observations were made on thirty children. It should be 
understood that the degree of pain produced was in all cases so slight as not to 
spoil the pleasure and interest of subjects in the proceedings. 
The accuracy of localisation of touch sensations was also measured in a number 
of the same subjects, and temperature spots were mapped out in a few. 
In the same subjects a series of observations on the delicacy of discrimination 
of differences of weight was made, and other series were made with the purpose of 
determining the degree of suggestibility of the people—the effect of size as appre- 
ciated by sight and grasp on the judgment of weight. It was interesting to find 
that although the abstract idea of weight seemed entirely new to the minds of 
these people, and no term in their language answered to it exactly, yet their power 
of discrimination of difference is at least as good as our own. 
In the same series of people the blood-pressure was observed by means of 
Hill and Barnard’s sphygmo-manometer during rest, muscular work, mental work 
and excitement, and slightly painful skin-pressure, and marked variations recorded 
under these conditions. No series of observations on white men under similar 
conditions have yet been made for comparison. 
Ill. The Lingwistic Results of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits 
and New Guinea. By Stpney H. Ray. 
The geographical position of the Torres Straits Islands renders an accurate 
knowledze of the construction of the languages important, especially for determining 
the relation of the Australian languages to those of New Guinea and the Malay 
Archipelago, and also, perhaps, to languages further west in Southern India and 
the Andaman Islands. Several missionaries have worked among the Hastern and 
Western tribes of the Straits, and the existing gospel translations are reputed to 
have been made by them, but no one has preserved any record of, or can throw 
any light upon the construction of the languages. The translations were analysed 
in a former work by Dr. Haddon and myself,' but the result was somewhat 
unsatisfactory. As we had dealt exhaustively with the vocabularies, my atten- 
tion during my stay in the islands was mainly concentrated upon the grammars 
of the two languages. 
The construction of the Eastern (Murray and Darnley Islands) language was 
found to be very complex, modifications of sense being expressed by an elaborate 
system of prefixes and suffixes. 
The grammar bears no resemblance to the Melanesian, and but little to the 
Australian. The speech used in school and church is a debased form of the 
original ; as my native informant described it, ‘ they cut it short.’ As most of the 
young people know English, it is very probable that the pure language will die 
out with the older folk. 
The language of the Western tribe was studied at the central island of 
Mabuiag, but the closely allied dialects spoken on Warrior Island, Saibai, and 
Prince of Wales Island, were also investigated. The grammar of this language is 
decidedly of Australian type, though there is no marked connection in structure or 
vocabulary with languages of the neighbouring mainland. Of these latter, the dialect 
of the Yaraikanna tribe in the neighbourhood of Cape York was also investigated. 
In New Guinea, at Port Moresby, the Motu language is well known, and I 
used it as the means of obtaining from Koitapu natives some illustrations of their 
strange language. The results show that there are people living in the Motu 
1 ©A Study of the Languages of Torres Straits.’ By S. H [Ray and A. C. Haddon, 
Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. (3) 1898, ii. p. 463 ; iv. 1897, p. 119. 
