THE ABORIGINES OF TASMANIA. 



345 



skin is brown rather than black ; the hair is black, long and straight. Collectively 

 these characters constitute marked physical differences from the Melanesians, and 

 approximate the Indonesian more to the Polynesian race of the Pacific. 



20. The difference between the direction of the follicle and hair in the scalp, 

 and in the form of the shaft, seen in the straight-haired Australian and the woolly- 

 haired Negro, applies also without doubt to other races which possess one or other 

 of these types. It adds, therefore, an important character in the differentiation of 

 Australians from Tasmanians, and in its general application also emphasises the value 

 of the study of the development of the hair and the form of the hair shaft, in con- 

 sidering the affinities and descent of the races of men. It also raises the question if 

 a race belonging to one of these two marked types can be descended from a race in 

 which the other type of hair is a distinctive feature. If this were confirmed, it would 

 tend to negative the suggestion recently advanced by Sergi, that the descent of the 

 Tasmanians has been (through the acquisition of new characters and by the loss of 

 others during thousands of years) from a branch of his so-called American genus 

 Hesperanthropus, which he thought became diffused over the Pacific area, where, in 

 addition to the frizzly- haired Melanesians and Tasmanians, the straight - haired 

 Polynesians constitute also an important ethnic element. 



Fig. 34. 



