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Presidential Address. 



FACTORS PRODUCING UNIFORMITY OF TYPE 

 AMONGST AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 



By W. L. Clelaxd. M.B. 



(Read October 2, 1900.) 



In offering a Presidential Address I niay congratulate the 

 Society on the production of Part 2 of its "Memoirs ' during 

 the year ; and also that the Government has again placed on 

 the estimates a further sum of =£100 towards the publication 

 of Part 3, descriptive of the Calabonna fossils. It is also 

 pleasing to note that the value of the anthropological work 

 done by Prof. Baldwin Spencer and our fellow colonist, Mr. 

 F. G. Gillen, S.M., has been appreciated by leading scientific 

 men in Great Britain. This has led to a memorial being 

 sent to the South Australian Government and the University 

 of Melbourne, that these two gentlemen might be allowed 

 a further opportunity of studying the aboriginal habits and 

 customs m Central Australia. It is extremely gratifying to 

 know that the authorities have seen their way to grant- 

 ing the request, and that the princely generosity of Mr. 

 David Syme, oi the Melbourne Age, has supplied the neces- 

 sary funds. 



It may be oi interest to the Fellows of the Society if a 

 short space is devoted to the consideration of how there 

 exists such a uniformity of type in the appearance of the 

 aborigines of Australia. To enquire why, considering the 

 Continental dimensions of Australia, practically the same 

 type of features appears in parts separated by hundreds of 

 miles. To enquire why evolution, which is always at work, 

 has not produced greater diversity of type. 



It has been pointed out by Romanes, in his work, "Darwin 

 and After Darwin/' that evolution rests on a tripod con- 

 sisting of Variability, Heredity, and Isolation. And that 

 evolution again is monotypic or polytypic according to cer- 

 tain definite conditions. And, further, that there is no 

 evolution at all if free intercrossing is allowed amongst all 

 the members of the parent stock, and if isolation in any of 

 its many forms is not present. For, although there is a 

 tendency to variability in each individual, yet heredity in the 

 event of free intercrossing neutralises this tendency by the 



