1910-11.] Study of the Tasmanian, Australian, and Papuan. 17 
II. — A Biometrical Study of the Relative Degree of Purity of Race 
of the Tasmanian, Australian, and Papuan. By Richard 
J. A. Berry, M.D., A. W. D. Robertson, M.D. Melb., and 
K. Stuart Cross, M.Sc. Melb. (From the Anatomy Department 
of the University of Melbourne.) 
(MS. received March 30, 1910. Read May 16, 1910.) 
If the marked divergence of ethnological opinion concerning the degree of 
racial purity or admixture of the Australian aboriginal affords evidence 
of anything at all, it can only he of the fact that the problems of his origin, 
as of his degree of racial purity, are not yet solved. Not only are there 
the most conflicting opinions on these points, but the cognate subjects of 
the origin, and degree of purity of the Tasmanian, and of his relationship, 
if any, to the Australian, are equally undetermined, whilst there is lastly 
the debatable point of the relation of both those primitive peoples to the 
Papuan. 
It would be a surprisingly easy thing to give example after example 
of the divergence of opinion on these points, hut a few characteristic 
specimens must suffice. 
For Keane (1) the Australian is an admixture. “Despite a general 
physical and mental likeness, most observers now recognise two original 
elements — a black and perhaps a low Caucasic — in the constitution of the 
Australian aborigines.” 
Again (2) : “ In this continent (Australia), of which Tasmania may be 
regarded as an ‘ ethnical annexe,’ most anthropologists recognise at least two 
fundamental types beneath a general physical and linguistic uniformity.” 
For Flower and Lydekker the “ Australians are probably not a homo- 
geneous group at all, as supposed by Huxley, but a cross between two 
already formed stocks.” 
For Topinard (3) the problem is an unsolved one. He says: “If the 
Australians are thorough Hindoos as regards their hair, they are Melanesians, 
or, if you will, New Hebrideans, New Caledonian negroes, in every other 
respect. The question may therefore be left. We are still in ignorance as to 
whether the present Australian race took its origin on the spot, with the 
characters that we admit as belonging to it, or whether, on the contrary, 
it was altogether constituted in Asia, or whether it is a cross race, and, in 
that case, of what elements it is composed.” 
VOL. XXXI. 
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