748 PRIMATES 
It is, however, possible to find African and Melanesian skulls quite 
alike in essential characters. 
The now extinct inhabitants of Tasmania were probably pure, 
but aberrant, members of the Melanesian group, which had 
undergone a modification from the original type, not by mixture 
with other races, but in consequence of long isolation, during which 
special characters had been gradually developed. Lying completely 
out of the track of all civilisation and commerce, even of the most 
primitive kind, they were little liable to be subject to the influence 
of any other race; and there is in fact nothing among their 
characters which could be accounted for in the way above 
suggested, as they were intensely, even exaggeratedly, Negroid 
in the form of nose, projection of mouth, and size of teeth, 
typically so in character of hair, and aberrant chiefly in the width 
of the skull in the parietal region. A cross with any of the 
Polynesian or Malay races sufficiently strong to produce this 
would, in all probability, have also left some traces on other parts 
of their organisation. 
On the other hand, in many parts of the Melanesian region 
there are distinct evidences of large admixture with Negrito, Malay, 
and Polynesian elements in varying proportions, producing numerous 
physical modifications. In many of the inhabitants of the great 
island of New Guinea itself and of the islands lying around it this 
mixture can be traced. In the people of Micronesia in the north 
and New Zealand in the south, although the Melanesian element 
is present, it is completely overlaid by the Polynesian, but there 
are probably few, if any, of the islands of the Pacific in which 
it does not form some factor in the composite character of the 
natives. 
The inhabitants of the continent of Australia have long been 
a puzzle to ethnologists. Of Negroid complexion, features, and 
skeletal characters, yet without the characteristic frizzly hair, their 
position has been one of great difficulty to determine. They have, 
in fact, been a stumbling-block in the way of every system proposed. 
The solution, supported by many considerations too lengthy to enter 
into here, appears to lie in the supposition that they are not a 
distinct race at all, that is, not a homogeneous group formed by the 
gradual modification of one of the primitive stocks, but rather a 
cross between two already-formed branches of these stocks. Accord- 
ing to this view, Australia was originally peopled with frizzly-haired 
Melanesians, such as those who still do, or did before the European 
invasion, dwell in the smaller islands which surround the north, 
east, and southern portions of the continent, but that a strong 
infusion of some other race, probably a low form of Caucasian 
Melanochroi, such as that which still inhabits the interior of the 
southern parts of India, has spread throughout the land from the 
