XIV. ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. 



that there was originally one great Negrito race occupying 

 the different groups as far west at least as Borneo, and 

 probably extending upon the mainland on the side of Siam, 

 the Malacca Peninsula, and perhaps as far as Burmah, 

 which probably at that time formed part of one vast con- 

 tinent. The traces of these people are, or have been, found 

 in several groups, notably in the interior of some islands 

 in the Malay Peninsula, and also in New Zealand, where a 

 black race was found by the original Maori colonists and 

 derisively called by them "black kumara." Papuans of the 

 present day are the oldest representatives of this race. In 

 Malaysia, this Pre-Malayan race was modified by admix- 

 ture with the Turanian races of the mainland of Asia, and 

 probably also by an admixture from the mainland of India. 

 This, he thought, constituted the present Polynesian race, 

 which still retains so much of its old Papuan element. The 

 lecturer stated that in his opinion this inter-mixture would 

 probably account for some, if not all the differences, which 

 exist to-day between the brown and the black races as 

 they are found in the different groups. He stated that 

 the Polynesians so formed, were the inhabitants of Malaysia 

 prior to the irruptions of Malay and Hindu immigrants, 

 by whom they were probably driven out and proceeded 

 westward leaving perhaps some traces on the islands in 

 their route, but were unable to form a settlement there 

 owing to the presence of warlike Papuan races. He thought 

 that the first home of the Polynesian tribes and from which 

 they dispersed over the Eastern Pacific was at Manu'a, in 

 the Samoan Group, to which place many of the Samoan 

 traditions and many from Fiji and other groups all point. 

 With regard to the languages spoken, he believed that much 

 as they appear to vary on first acquaintance, they are 

 radically all of one common stock, that the points of 

 similarity between the two languages as in the construc- 

 tion and formation of nouns and adjectives, the existence 



