Dr. Pritchard, in his work upon the natural history of man, assigns the Australian to a Pelagian negro race. The absence of woolly hair made it necessary to modify the negro type so as to include the Australian, whose hair is for the most part wavy or lank, sometimes curly, with an occasional instance of close curls not more nearly allied to the woolly negro than are the heads of some Caucasians. He considers the race allied to the Arafuras, or Alforas, of the interior of New Guinea. It may well be that some families of that tribe were landed at or escaped to the neighbouring shore of Cape York. It may be equally true that the Alforas themselves were but a hive thrown off from Hindostan in pre-historic times. The coarser and shorter haired Tasmanian race he affirms more positively to be the Pelagian negro; but ethnologists writing in European studies, and travellers on the spot, could not account for the fact that in the Tasmanian race, remote from every land but Australia, there was so marked a difference between the human air on the island and that of the continent.
It may be noticed that philosophers who deduce from a few sculls their ethnological theories often[1] suffer from faulty induction, and races invented to suit theories thus constructed exist only in idea. In shape, in physiognomy, and in disposition, there were as wide differences amongst Australians as amongst uncultivated Europeans, though they escaped observation except from those who had profited by local knowledge. The prognathous type imputed to the Australian may often be seen in the hinds of Tipperary or the delvers in Staffordshire;[2] and in intelligence, good-humour, and loyalty the despised black race often put to shame the boors among the vaunting Caucasian intruders.[3]
- ↑ Prof. Owen wrote "always" instead of "often."
- ↑ Prof. Owen wrote "good" as to this statement.
- ↑ A native (the man wounded by the platypus) who was readier than most of his countrymen, though many were eloquent on occasion, boasted to the author that he had overcome in argument a doctor of physic who contended that the world revolved on its own axis.
Native: If it did we could not stand; we should tumble down.
Doctor: No; we don't fall from a moving coach.
