proportion than in other races of modern men. Considering the great area of the island-continent on which the Australoids must have lived for many thousand years, there is considerable uniformity of physical appearance amongst them, and a general resemblance in the structure and sounds of their languages, though these last are divisible into two main groups: those of the north and north-west, and the speech of the remainder of Australia. In considering their language, to some extent, and still more in examining their rudimentary arts and religious ideas, it is obvious that the people of the north-east of Australia have been visited for centuries by Malays, Papuans, and even Polynesians, yet that none of these superior races succeeded in getting a permanent foothold. So far as any sense of shame was concerned, the Australoids of both sexes went quite naked, or merely wore a girdle round the hips, to which strings or strips of fur were attached; but in cold weather or at night they put round their shoulders cloaks made from the skins of marsupials, skins sewn together after being scraped, softened, and dressed. Their own bodies they decorated or mutilated in various ways, such as knocking out two of the upper front teeth, passing a bone nose pin 5 or 6 inches long through the septum of the nose, cutting off the end joints of their fingers, and marking the skin of the upper arm, chest, and belly by terrific scars of raised skin. This was "cicatrization", so often referred to in describing the skin decoration of savages, especially the negroes of the Congo basin. The Australoids did not tatu their bodies (with pin-pricks and paint) like the Polynesians and Malays. They painted their skins for warfare or for ceremonial dances with red and yellow ochre, white and grey clay, and black mineral substances or charcoal. Also the men would gum to their bodies the white down or fluff of certain birds and beasts. [Illustration: A TYPICAL POLYNESIAN (A man of Tongatabu, Tonga Archipelago)] [Illustration: AN AUSTRALOID TYPE FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND (From photographs)]