CKANIOLOGY OF THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 389 



have racial characters which distinguish them from the dolichocephalic, mop-haired, 

 black-skinned Papuans and Melanesians ; from the brachycephalic, brown-skinned 

 Polynesians ; from the brachycephalic, straight black-haired, yellow-skinned Malays ; and 

 from the brachycephalic, woolly-haired, black-skinned, dwarf-like Negritos. Whilst in 

 the great islands of Malaya various tribes, collectively termed Indonesians, are found, with 

 skins brown in colour, varying in depth of tint to almost black, long, straight black hair, 

 stature from 5 ft. 2 in. to 5 ft. 4 in ; with the head and skull dolichocephalic or approxi- 

 mating thereto ; the mean height and breadth of the skull almost equal ; the glabella and 

 supracihary ridges moderate ; the nose moderately wide at the nostrils ; the face moderate 

 in height and width, the upper jaw not very projecting ; the orbits tending to be rounded 

 in form, and the hard palate with a wide and shallow arch,* — characters which 

 collectively distinguish them from the Australians. 



Crozet considered the hair of the Tasmanians to be like the "wool" of Kaffirs, 

 and Captain Cook compared it with that of the West African Negro. In most other 

 respects the physical and other differences are marked, and as Africa is separated from 

 Tasmania by a wide and deep ocean, migration from one country to the other in the 

 early stages of human history seems to have been impossible. 



In New Guinea and many other Oceanic islands, and in the extensive range of Asiatic 

 islands reaching westwards to the Indian Ocean, people with black skins and other 

 negro characters are found. Sometimes they are spoken of collectively as Negritos, 

 and the term Negritic by some ethnologists has been made to include even the black 

 Dravidian people of Southern India. In my judgment, however, the extension of the 

 term is unfortunate, as it would embrace races which, although they resemble each other 

 in the colour of the skin, differ greatly in many other respects. 



The term Negrito should be limited to such black-skinned, woolly-haired people 

 with small brachycephalic heads, jaws not very projecting, nose not so flattened, nostrils 

 not so wide as in the Negro, and of dwarf-like stature, characteristic of the people 

 who under the name Semangs inhabit the Malay Peninsula, or as the Mincopies occupy 

 the Andaman Islands, and as the Aetas are found in some of the Philippine Islands. 



It is not impossible that a migration of the Negritos eastwards into the Oceanic area 

 may have taken place in bygone time. It was shown by G. W. Earl in 1 845, and subse- 

 quently by A. R. Wallace, that only a shallow sea from 40 to 100 fathoms deep, which 

 indicated a recent land connection, separated the Malay Peninsula from the great islands 

 Sumatra, Borneo, Java, which extended northwards towards the Philippine Islands, and 

 that similar shallow straits lie between New Guinea, the islands in Torres Straits, and 

 Australia. It would seem, therefore, that Asia and Australia at one time had been con- 

 nected with each other through the chain of islands. A. R. Wallace came to the 

 conclusion that a band of deeper sea between Borneo and Celebes divided the islands into 

 two groups — a western Indo- Malayan, the natural productions in which resembled those 



* See my Memoir on the Craniology of the Natives of Borneo, etc., in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xlv.,part iii., 

 1907. 



TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. XL VI. PART II. (NO. 17). 60 



