Will the longer range of the traditionary period supply any such information? I think not. Nevertheless it must be added, that in Nukahiva pedigrees run up to the eighty-fifth generation, the founders of them being connected with the first occupancy of the island. Even, however, if we admit so long a genealogy as an historical fact, it only gives the date for one particular island.
Proper ethnological reasoning is, from its very nature, inapplicable to the investigation of a definite epoch in chronology; since it only begins where the evidence of testimony ends. Furthermore, it is only approximate, since it simply calculates, by means of an imperfect induction, the minimum period required to account for differences; and the maximum period that will account for resemblances; e.g. for the Polynesians to differ as they do from the Micronesian, a certain time must have elapsed; and for them to differ no more than they do, that time must have a limit.
Applied to the relative date of the Oceanic migrations, ethnological reasoning gives for even the most recent of them, a geological rather than an historical epoch; and this is as much as it is safe to say. Its other probable conclusions are more definite.
1. Occupancy had begun in Australia before migration across Torres Strait had commenced in New Guinea.
2. Occupancy had begun in New Guinea before Polynesian migration had commenced in Protonesia. The first of these facts we infer from the physical differences between the Australian and the Papuan, taken with the fact that it is scarcely likely that the Papuans of Torres Straits would have failed in extending themselves to Australia had that island been unoccupied.
The second is an inference from the diversion of the Protonesian population from New Guinea to the Micronesian line, since the best reason that can be assigned for the Protonesians not having taken possession of the Papuan isles, is to be found in the assumption that they were previously inhabited.
This brings us to the third question, as to the import of the darker coloured populations in areas more especially belonging to the brown and olive-coloured tribes.—I do not see how we can consider these as aught else but the lighter-coloured populations in a ruder stage of society; since unless we take this view we must look upon them as the representatives of a separate section of the human kind; a supposition against which there are the two following objections.
a. That the difficulties respecting the population of the Polynesian area are just doubled by such an assumption; since instead of having to account for the undoubted Polynesians alone (a matter quite difficult enough of itself) we should then have to account for an earlier migration of Negritos as well.
b. That if such a previous migration had taken place, we should expect to find—considering the vast number of Polynesian islands—at least one island where the blacker race remained unmixed, and (as such) speaking the original non-polynesian language, which is implied in the assumed independence of origin; since it is exceedingly unlikely that a second migration should have so nearly coincided with a former one as to people and leave unpeopled exactly the same areas. Now out of all the isles of the South Sea none presents the phenomenon of a pure black population, as determined by the double test of colour and of language.
On the other hand, it may be urged—a. That, although it may be a matter of doubt with competent judges whether improved physical and social conditions have so great an influence upon the colour of the skin and the texture of the hair as is imagined by some extreme thinkers on the point, it is generally admitted that they have some influence.