REPORT OR THE HOMAN CRANIA. 
91 
approximate to the Negrito race. It is of course a question for consideration whether the 
Negritos or the Papuans are the primitive inhabitants of New Guinea. The Papuans are 
undoubtedly the more vigorous race, and it is not unlikely that they may have to a large 
extent displaced and driven to the mountains, or perhaps somewhat intermingled with, 
a more feeble pre-existing Negrito population. 
There is, however, in the study of the crania collected in New Guinea, an element of 
uncertainty which should not be lost sight of ; as, from the practice of head hunting and 
preserving, it is not possible to pronounce definitely whether those skulls collected by 
several travellers, wdfich had been preserved as trophies, really belonged to the race 
occupying the spot where the skulls were obtained, or had belonged to people of some 
other tribe or race conquered in war. The Rev. S. Macfarlane has given an interesting 
explanation of how it is that in these trophies the lower jaw so seldom accompanies the 
skull, for the man who first wounds the enemy gets the one, whilst he who kills and 
beheads him gets the other. It will require therefore a more intimate knowledge of New 
Guinea than we yet possess to enable ethnologists to state precisely the exact distribution 
of the brachycephalic and dolichocephalic races in that island, and this result can only be 
attained with accuracy when a sufficient number of skulls known to have belonged to the 
people occupying each district has been obtained. 1 
The Australian race, though separated by a strait only about 80 miles wide at Cape 
York from New Guinea, has not apparently exercised any influence there. For the 
northern Australians, although they make canoes, are not a seafaring people, and they 
are much inferior in civilization to the Papuans. There is indeed one island in Torres 
Straits, Kowrarega, inhabited according to Macgillivray 2 by a mixed race, formed by a 
complete fusion of the Papuans with the Australians. The Papuans, on the other hand, 
do seem to have somewhat modified the characters of the tribes inhabiting the north 
coast of Australia. Mr. Paul Foelsehe, who lived for a number of years in the Northern 
Territory of Australia, states 3 that the hair of the head of the men is invariably thick 
and curly, and he has met with instances where it strongly resembles that of the Papuans, 
but these are very rare. In the women, as a rule, the hair is with few exceptions not so 
curly as that of the men. 
The archipelago immediately to the north and east of New Guinea, of which the 
Admiralty Islands form almost the western limit, is also inhabited by a Melanesian 
people. 
The people oiNew Britain are, according to Dr. Finsch, 4 pure Melanesians, their hair 
1 Dr. 0. Pinsch in his Anthropologische Ergebnisse, 1884, expresses his belief that the people of the south-east 
coast from Presh Water Bay to Keppel Bay, also those of the islands in Torres Straits, of Saibai Island and of Salwatti 
in the extreme north-west, are all of the same race, i.e., pure Melanesians. 
2 Voyage of the “ Rattlesnake,” 1852. 
3 Notes on the Aborigines of North Australia, Trans. andProc. of Roy. Soc. of South Australia, Adelaide, 1882, p. 1. 
4 Anthropologische Ergebnisse einer Reise in der Siidsee, Berlin, 1884. 
