Physical appearance.—Negritos, with curly, frizzy, or woolly hair; i.e., with the character of the Papua, but not within the Papua geographical area.
The native population is nearly extinct; and but few specimens exist of their language.
Fig. 8.
It fell into, at least, four dialects—mutually unintelligible: probably into more.
Writers who are not, otherwise, over-prone to exaggerate differences, have separated the Tasmanians from the Australians; and this arrangement is followed in the present work. The physical difference is chiefly that of the hair. The language, as far as the imperfect vocabularies have allowed me to examine it, has fewer affinities with the southern dialects of Australia than even the known amount of dissimilarity between fundamentally allied languages prepares us for.
Furthermore—it was my impression, that such philological affinities as existed were with New Caledonia rather than Australia. If so, the philology and the physical appearance go together; and the Tasmanian population came round Australia rather than across it.
The present position, therefore, of the Tasmanians is provisional.
Necdum finitus Orestes.—There are two other Negrito localities; which, geographically speaking, are scarcely Amphinesian, and not at all Kelænonesian. From the latter area they lie wholly apart. With the Protonesian portion of Amphinesia they are less disconnected; indeed they seem, at first, to form a prolongation of the northern extremity of Sumatra.