Abstract
LONDON Anthropological Institute, June 25.—Mr. John Evans, D.C.L., F.R.S., president, in the chair.—Dr. Paul Topinard of Paris, was elected an Honorary Member, and the election of the following gentlemen as Ordinary Members was announced:—The Rev. H. W. Watkins, Warden of St. Augustine's College, Canterbury; Hy. Wm. Jackson, M.R.C.S., F.R.A.S., F.G.S., of Lewisham, and Dr. Dunkley, of New Zealand.—A paper was read on the ethnology of the islands of the Pacific, by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee. This paper was chiefly intended to explain an ethnographic chart of the Pacific, coloured according to the author's own observations, and which, in the main, followed the divisions of races in previous charts. In speaking of the people, he said the Melanesians, or black race, might be regarded as the aboriginal people, and that they had affinities, more or less remote, with the blacks found in the various parts of the southern hemisphere. Probably these Melanesians once extended further across the Pacific than they now do. The brown Malayo-Polynesian race had, doubtless, entered Polynesia from the west. The difficulties of such a migration were not insuperable. An example was given of a comparatively recent arrival of a vessel thought to be Chinese or Japanese, at Fotuna, or Home Island, containing forty people. There is a third people in Polynesia differing considerably from both of the others. These are the Micronesians. They probably are primarily from the Philippines, or some other portion of the Indian Archipelago, but are mixed with Melanesian and Malayo-Polynesian blood. There is also reason to believe they have had an admixture of Chinese or Japanese blood derived from the occupants of junks which have been driven by adverse winds to this region.—Mr. Worthington G.Smith read a paper descriptive of palæolithic implements from the gravels of N.E. London, and a paper was communicated by Mr. G.M. Atkinson on a new method of finding the cephalic index.
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SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES . Nature 18, 374–376 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/018374b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/018374b0