Mr. Cosmo Newbery, B.Sc., has made a number of careful microscopic examinations of seven samples of hair from the following individuals, namely:—Half-caste woman, "Ralla" (head); half-caste man, "Parker" (head); black man, "Wonga" (head); black woman, "Maria" (head); black girl (head); boy, aged seven years (back); girl, aged seven years (back); and he reports that, after having compared them with a number of samples taken from Europeans, he has failed to detect any special characters.
The bodies of some of the men and boys are said to be entirely covered or almost entirely covered with short soft hair.
Dr. Strutt, speaking of the natives of Echuca, says that the complexion is "a dark chocolate-brown, approaching to black; hair, black, rather coarse and curling, not woolly; black eyes; thick nose, rather rounded; lips rather thick, but not projecting."[1]
The late Dr. Ludwig Becker, an artist and a man of science, thus writes:—"The prevailing complexion is a chocolate-brown. Hair, jet-black, and when combed and oiled, falls in beautiful ringlets down the cheeks and neck. Beard, black, strong, curly; eyes, deep-brown, black, the white of a light-yellowish hue."
The hair of the head, in both men and women, is coarser and stronger than the hair of Europeans, and it is usually far more abundant.
I have never seen in any native of Victoria that peculiar bluish or leaden tint which in some lights appears so distinctly in the complexion of the Maori of New Zealand and the lighter-colored races of Polynesia. The eye and the skin of the Australian exhibit invariably warm tints, however deep may be the color.
Some children of full-blooded blacks are nearly of the same color as European children when born, and all of them are generally light-red.[2] As regards form, they do not differ very much from children of other races. But when they arrive at the age of two, four, six, or eight years, they are generally very dark, and in form differ much from Europeans. The head is generally well shaped and well placed, the eyes are large, and the body is well formed, though the limbs are long, and in some individuals thin, and the face is not agreeable. The under-jaw is large, and the lips are heavy and hanging. Some children are prognathous to such a degree as to present a profile anything but pleasing. The cheeks of both males and females are hairy in the places where the beard grows in man; and the neck and in some the back are covered with short hair, always thickest in those parts which in most Europeans are shown obscurely by streaks of hair coming down the neck from the head, and following the line of the vertebræ. The arms and hands exhibit a thin covering of coarse hair.
Little boys of five and six years of age show sometimes as much hair on the cheeks as a European of seventeen or eighteen, but the hair is not crisp and curly as the hair of a beard generally is, but straight and clinging closely to the
