The native races of the Pacific Ocean / William Henry Flower.

  • Flower, William Henry, 1831-1899.
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The native races of the Pacific Ocean / William Henry Flower. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    / ‘^RS»€NTE / * 5 ti \, author l-a letoeiX institution of ®ireat IBritain, ^ WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, May 31, 1878. George Busk, Esq. F.E.S. Treasurer and Vice-President, in the Chair. William Henry Flower, F.E.S. HUNTERIAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND CONSERVATOR OF THE MUSEUM OF TUB . ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND. The Native Races of the Pacific Ocean. The region of the world treated of in the present lecture is that known to geographers as Oceania, or Oceanioa, consisting of a vast number of islands of various sizes, from Australia downwards, scattered throughout the great ocean tract bounded east and west by the continents of America and Asia. The inhabitants of these islands offer many advantages for the com- mencement of a study of physical anthropology, and for an exposition of the principles of the science. We shall find that they present great diversity ; some of the widest contrasts to be met with in the human species are to be found among them. We shall also find in this area some of the lowest existing types of mankind, affording material for studying the most extreme deviation known from the highest race, as exemplified in the European. Lastly, the comparative isolation in which the greater number of these islands have remained for count- less generations, lying hidden in their ocean solitudes, far away from the track of commerce and civilization, has caused their inhabitants to develop and retain distinctive characteristics more sharply defined than those of other regions of the world, where constant inter- communication has resulted in infinite and intricate blendings of primitive races, and but partial and imperfect evolutions of new ones. The people of these islands will be treated of here mainly from an anatomical point of view, and in great measure from observations made upon such portions of their bodily frame (chiefly crania) as are preserved in the collection under my charge. But it must be observed in limine, that this collection, as with all others yet formed, large as it may appear to the uninitiated in the difficulties of craniology, is wholly insufficient for the purpose of constructing a classification of mankind, founded on physical structure. It can