of the rivers, and with the nutriment afforded by wild roots. While thus dependent on chance from day to day, man does not as yet recoil from cold-blooded animals, such as caterpillars, lizards, ants, and worms. As hunters destitute of bows and arrows, even the throwing-stick would not have ensured them against frequent times of scarcity had they not made great use of prairie fires. But the chase itself necessitated frequent change of abode. When the pools left by the last rainy season began to dry up, the natives were obliged to leave their hunting grounds and repair to the well-known spots where water still remained in deep pools. Thus it may perhaps be the steppe-like nature of the country which has kept the natives from agriculture in any form.

Recent explorers who, though hardy and meritorious, were usually uneducated men, have frequently stated that Australian grass consists of oat and barley grass. It would be natural to suppose that in such an extensive and sunny region of steppes some wild species of cereals should exist,38 and this is actually the case, and in relatively, if not absolutely, greater variety than in America. Thus in the marshes near Sturt's Creek and on the Victoria, Ferdinand Müller, the botanist, found wild rice, which the natives ground between two stones, and the edible seeds of a wild cereal of the genus Pannicum, or millet, and occasionally in North-western Australia a species of wild oat. On April 28th, 1861, MacDouall Stuart, in his second attempt to cross the continent, discovered at Tomkinson Creek a species of corn resembling wheat, except that the grains were smaller and the straw much tougher. In the autumn of 1861, when staying near the remarkable lake district between 28° and 26° south latitude somewhat to the east of the longitude of Adelaide, MacKinlay noticed a leguminous vetch-like plant growing on the lands covered by the floods of the rainy season. The natives swept up the fallen seeds, cleaned them by winnowing, ground them to flour, and baked them into flat cakes. It is probable from the same seed that the tribes on Cooper Creek made the Nardu bread, with which they for a time prolonged the lives of those unfortunate men, Burke and Wills,

"Landsborough, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxxiii.

who were the first persons to cross the continent of Australia, on their return from Cape York. Howitt, who there rescued King, their last surviving companion, describes (Cooper's Creek, Sept. 1st, 1861), the plant which probably produces the Nardu seeds as resembling clover in foliage, but covered with a silvery down, which envelops the seeds also while fresh. When the weed dies, the seeds, which are flat and almost oval, literally cover the ground, and when they have been separated from the sand, they are crushed by the natives and made into bread. 39

These facts are of great importance, as proving that the manufacture of flour and the baking of bread are older than agriculture. Various reasons may be adduced to show how it happened that the natives never thought of multiplying these useful products by artificial cultivation, thus supplying themselves with provisions, diminishing their dependence on the produce of the chase, freeing themselves from the necessity for wandering, and consequently rendering it possible to rear a more numerous posterity. Australia, especially in the tropical parts, possesses a great variety of fruit trees, so that scarcely any explorers return without bringing home some new or nominally new discovery of this description. Even bananas are said to grow wild in the Carpentaria country, and in the north, Ferdinand Müller came upon a grape-bearing creeper which he considers identical with our vine. In the south, the so-called Hottentot fig, which is the fruit of a species of mesembryanthemum, is a natural article of food. The adoption of agriculture by the Australian people was, however, delayed less by the fruits, which remain in an edible condition only for a short time, than by edible roots, which, unlike the cereals, required no careful preservation. The peninsula of Carpentaria produces the true yam (Dioscorea Carpentaria), while the south yields the roots of the sorrel, an oxalis, and the grass-tree, which is a species of Xanthorhea. The root of the latter is dug up by the women with pointed sticks, and is always kept as the last resource in case of failure of the chase. On the Swan River, on the west coast, kangaroos are so plentiful in places, that when the natives were promised ninepence a head for them, they brought in such

39 Petermann's Mittheilungen. 1862.

a number that the settlers fed their pigs with them. The late James Morill, who lived for seventeen years among the coast tribes of Queensland, near Cape Bowling Green, also states that food was plentiful. It may be said that Australian society was not yet ripe for the transition to agriculture, that is to say, was not sufficiently dense, for the population is estimated at not more than 200,000, by many at only 60,000, for which the hunting grounds were more than adequate.

Yet the digging up of roots is so troublesome, and the food so little nutritious, that it appears strange that as, by the abundant growth of the cereals enumerated, Nature had so clearly shown them the method and the advantages of agriculture, the Australians should never have thought of putting seeds into the ground. It is only because habit has blunted our apprehension of the extraordinary, that we fail to perceive that an unusual degree of intelligence is implied by the first scattering of seed in the expectation of a result. The ancient Greeks, who were nearer to the first movements of human civilization than we are, and from whom the great first steps were not hidden, regarded a purposive invention of agriculture as beyond the intellectual powers of man, and therefore ascribed it to a deity, just as the Egyptians, amongst other honours, gave to their Osiris the credit of having taught mankind the art of sowing seed. The first cultivation of plants, even if practised only by migratory hordes in their summer quarters, contains the germ of all future progress, for man then ceases to depend on the chance of finding a supply of natural roots. When his strength is not perpetually exhausted by the exertion of hunting, man has time left for the invention of improvements. The high degree of intelligence often met with in hunting tribes is quite absorbed by the chase itself, as it is constantly and keenly directed to the observation of the nature of both the game and the hunting ground. The chase is also fatiguing to the body, so that in default of some other mode of gaining a maintenance, intellectual development, which always requires physical repose, is out of the question.

II. THE PAPUANS OF AUSTRALIA AND ASIA.

THE Papuans of Australia include the inhabitants of New Guinea, the Pelew Islands, Tombara (New Ireland), Birara, the Solomon group, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, with the adjacent Loyalty Islands, and lastly of the Fiji archipelago. The distinctive characters of their race are preserved in the greatest purity in New Guinea, although even there, especially in the western half, intermixtures with the Asiatic Malays have recently taken place. In the other islands mentioned, the Polynesians have intruded themselves among the older populations, and have materially influenced the language and manners, but their influence upon the physical characters has been much less, so that the inhabitants of the Pelew and Fiji groups, as well as of New Caledonia, may be unhesitatingly reckoned among the Papuan race. In the Carolines and Mariannes, or Ladrones, Polynesian and Papuan blood is intermingled, but the former preponderates, so that, as hybrids, these so-called Micronesians are more correctly placed in the next group of nations.

The most distinctive mark of the Australian Papuans is their peculiarly flattened, abundant, and long hair, which grows in tufts and surrounds the head like a periwig, or a crown, eight inches high, which is however probably much aided by constant care and the aid of a three-pronged comb. This tufted matting of the hairs is also common to the Hottentots, whose hair does not however grown so long or so thick; perhaps close miscroscopic comparison would show different causes for the tendency. The Papuans are also distinguished from the aborigines of the Cape by the abundant growth of their beard, and by their general hairiness.2 The skin of all Papuans is dark, almost black in New Caledonia, brown or chocolate colour in New Guinea, blue-black at Fiji, this peculiar colour being due to the growth of a light

1 See illustration in Wallace's Malay Archipelago, vol. ii. p. 306.

2 Nieuw Guinea ethnographisch en natuurkundig onderzocht en beschreven. Amsterdam, 1862.

Physical Characters.

339

coloured down upon the skin.3 Welcker's measurements show that the New Caledonians have an index of breadth of 70, an index of height of 77; in other Papuans the numbers are 73 for the one and 75 for the other, which show that the form of the skull is narrow and high. This agrees with the results obtained by Barnard Davis in the cases of the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia; he found 72 as the index of breadth and 76-79 of height. The Papuans must therefore also be ranked as dolichocephals. The jaws are prognathous, although not to so great a degree as occurs in extreme cases among negroes. The lips are fleshy and somewhat intumescent. The broad nose is hooked, giving the countenance the Jewish cast noticed by all observers. It is noticeable in

the inhabitants of New Caledonia and of Annatom in the New Hebrides, in the Fijians, and in the inhabitants of Errub and Darnley Islands,5 of the north coast of New Guinea near Dorey," of the south coast on the River Utanata, and, lastly, of the Pelew Islands. We gather from descriptions that the Papuans, independent of local variations, are of medium stature, or at least certainly not tall.

Wallace considers the inhabitants of the islands on the coast of New Guinea, such as Waigiou and Mysol, and likewise of the Aru and Ké groups, as well as those of Larat and Timor-Laut, to be pure Papuans, while we find on the more westerly islands, on the Molucca group, including Halmahera, the Banda Islands, the eastern half of Floris, as well as on Chandana and all the islands to the east of it, the remains of an aboriginal population, once belonging to the Papuan race, but now much mixed with Malay blood. It is far more difficult to determine the race of the aboriginal population of the Philippines and those islands which on geological grounds must be assigned to Asia and not to

* Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi. Waitz (Gerland), vol. vi.

5

Jukes, Voyage of H.M.S. Fly.

Wallace, Malay Archipelago, vol. ii. p. 305.

Natuurlijke geschiedenes der nederlansdche overzeesche bezittingen. Land en volkenkunde door Salomon Müller.

*Karl Semper, Die Palau-Inseln. Leipzic, 1873.