with other races, but in consequence of long isolation, during which special characters have gradually developed. Lying completely out of the track of all civilisation and commerce, even of the most primitive kind, they were little liable to be subject to the influence of any other race, and there is in fact nothing among their characters which could be accounted for in this way, as they were intensely, even exaggeratedly, Negroid in the form of nose, projection of mouth, and size of teeth, typically so in character of hair, and aberrant chiefly in width of skull in the parietal region. A cross with any of the Polynesian or Malay races sufficiently strong to produce this would, in all probability, have also left some traces on other parts of their organisation.

On the other hand, in many parts of the Melanesian region there are distinct evidences of large admixture with Negrito, Malay, and Polynesian elements in varying proportions, producing numerous physical modifications. In many of the inhabitants of the great island of New Guinea itself and of those lying around it this mixture can be traced. In the people of Micronesia in the north, and New Zealand in the south, though the Melanesian element is present, it is completely overlaid by the Polynesian, but there are probably few, if any, of the islands of the Pacific in which it does not form some factor in the composite character of the natives.

The inhabitants of the continent of Australia have long been a puzzle to ethnologists. Of Negroid complexion, features, and skeletal characters, yet without the characteristic frizzly hair, their position has been one of great difficulty to determine. They have, in fact, been a stumbling-block in the way of every system proposed. The solution, supported by many considerations too lengthy to enter into here, appears to lie in the supposition that they are not a distinct race at all, that is, not a homogeneous group formed by the gradual modification of one of the primitive stocks, but rather a cross between two alreadyformed branches of these stocks. According to this view,

Australia was originally peopled with frizzly-haired Melanesians, such as those who still do, or did before the European invasion, dwell in the smaller islands which surround the north, east, and southern portions of the continent, but that a strong infusion of some other race, probably a low form of Caucasian Melanochroi, such as that which still inhabits the interior of the southern parts of India, has spread throughout the land from the northwest, and produced a modification of the physical characters, especially of the hair. This influence did not extend across Bass's Straits into Tasmania, where, as just said, the Melanesian element remained in its purity. It is more strongly marked in the northern and central parts of Australia than on many portions of the southern and western coasts, where the lowness of type and more curly hair, sometimes closely approaching to frizzly, show a stronger retention of the Melanesian element. If the evidence should prove sufficiently strong to establish this view of the origin of the Australian natives, it will no longer be correct to speak of a primitive Australian, or even Australoid, race or type, or look for traces of the former existence of such a race anywhere out of their own land. Absolute proof of the origin of such a race is, however, very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and I know nothing to exclude the possibility of the Australians being mainly the direct descendants of a very primitive human type, from which the frizzly-haired Negroes may be an offset. This character of hair must be a specialisation for it seems very unlikely that it was the attribute of the common ancestors of the human race.

D. The fourth branch of the Negroid race consists of the diminutive round-headed people called Negritos, still found in a pure or unmixed state in the Andaman Islands, and forming a substratum of the population, though now greatly mixed with invading races, especially Malays, in the Philippines, and many of the islands of the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, and perhaps of some parts of the southern portion of the mainland of Asia. They also probably contribute to the varied population of the

great island of Papua or New Guinea, where they appear to inerge into the taller, longer-headed and longer-nosed Melanesians proper. They show, in a very marked manner, some of the most striking anatomical peculiarities of the Negro race, the frizzly hair, the proportions of the limbs, especially the humeroradial index, and the form of the pelvis; but they differ in many cranial and facial characters, both from the African Negroes on the one hand, and the typical Oceanic Negroes, or Melanesians, on the other, and form a very distinct and wellcharacterised group.

II. The principal groups that can be arranged round the Mongolian type are

A. The Eskimo, who appear to be a branch of the typical North Asiatic Mongols, who in their wanderings northwards and eastwards across the American continent, isolated almost as perfectly as an island population would be, hemmed in on one side by the eternal Polar ice and on the other by hostile tribes of American Indians, with which they rarely, if ever, mingled, have gradually developed characters most of which are stronglyexpressed modifications of those seen in their allies who still remain on the western side of Behring's Straits. Every special characteristic which distinguishes a Japanese from the average of mankind is seen in the Eskimo in an exaggerated degree, so that there can be no doubt about their being derived from the same stock. It has also been shown that these special characteristics gradually increase from west to east, and are seen in their greatest perfection in the inhabitants of Greenland; at all events, in those where no crossing with the Danes has taken place. Such scanty remains as have yet been discovered of the early inhabitants of Europe present no structural affinities to the Eskimo, although it is not unlikely that similar external conditions may have led them to adopt similar modes of life. In fact, the Eskimo are such an intensely specialized race, perhaps the most specialized of any in existence, that it is probable that they are of comparatively late origin, and were

VOL. XIV.

2 D

not as a race contemporaries with the men whose rude flint tools found in our drifts excite so much interest and speculation as to the makers, who have been sometimes, though with little evidence to justify such an assumption, reputed to be the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the northernmost parts of America.

B. The typical Mongolian races constitute the present population of Northern and Central Asia. They are not very distinctly but still conveniently for descriptive purposes, divided into two groups, the Northern and the Southern.

a. The former, or Mongolo-Altaic group, are united by the affinities of their language. These people, from the cradle of their race in the great central plateau of Asia, have at various times poured out their hordes upon the lands lying to the west, and have penetrated almost to the heart of Europe. The Finns, the Magyars, and the Turks, are each the descendants of one of these waves of incursion, but they have for so many generations intermingled with the peoples through whom they have passed in their migrations, or have found in the countries in which they have ultimately settled, that their original physical characters have been completely modified. Even the Lapps, that diminutive tribe of nomads inhabiting the most northern parts of Europe, supposed to be of Mongolian descent, show so, little of the special attributes of that branch, that it is difficult to assign them a place in it in a classification based upon physical characters. The Japanese are said by their language to be allied rather to the Northern than to the following branch of the Mongolian stock.

b. The southern Mongolian group, divided from the former chiefly by language and habits of life, includes the greater part of the population of China, Thibet, Burmah, and Siam,

C. The next great division of Mongoloid people is the Malay, subtypical it is true, but to which an easy transition can be traced from the most characteristic members of the type.

D. The brown Polynesians, Malayo-Polynesians, Mahoris, Sa

waioris, or Kanakas, as they have been variously called, seen in their greatest purity in the Samoan, Tongan, and Eastern Polynesian Islands, are still more modified, and possess less of the characteristic Mongolian features; but still it is difficult to place them anywhere else in the system. The large infusion of the Melanesian element throughout the Pacific must never be forgotten in accounting for the characters of the people now inhabiting the islands, an element in many respects so diametrically opposite to the Mongolian, that it would materially alter the characters, especially of the hair and beard, which has been with many authors a stumbling-block to the affiliation of the Polynesian with the Mongol stock. The mixture is physically a fine one, and in some proportions produces a combination, as seen, for instance, in the Maories of New Zealand, which in all definable characters approaches quite as near, or nearer, to the Caucasian type, than to either of the stocks from which it may be presumably derived. This resemblance has led some writers to infer a real extension of the Caucasian element at some very early period into the Pacific Islands, and to look upon. their inhabitants as the product of a mingling of all three great types of men. Though this is a very plausible theory, it rests on little actual proof, as the combination of Mongolo-Malayan and Melanesian characters in different degrees, together with the local variations certain to arise in communities so isolated from each other and exposed to such varied conditions as the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, would probably account for all the modifications observed among them.

E. The native population (before the changes wrought by the European conquest) of the great continent of America, excluding the Eskimo, present, considering the vast extent of the country they inhabit and the great differences of climate and other surrounding conditions, a remarkable similarity of essential characters, with much diversity of detail.

The construction of the numerous American languages, of which as many as twelve hundred have been distinguished, is