II.—A Biometrical Study of the Relative Degree of Purity of Race of the Tasmanian, Australian, and Papuan

Abstract

If the marked divergence of ethnological opinion concerning the degree of racial purity or admixture of the Australian aboriginal affords evidence of anything at all, it can only be of the fact that the problems of his origin, as of his degree of racial purity, are not yet solved. Not only are there the most conflicting opinions on these points, but the cognate subjects of the origin, and degree of purity of the Tasmanian, and of his relationship, if any, to the Australian, are equally undetermined, whilst there is lastly the debatable point of the relation of both those primitive peoples to the Papuan.