“With the Oceanic Negroes, or Melanesians, as they are now commonly called, we might naturally suppose they had the most in common. But this is not the case. Although the Melanesians vary much in stature, none are so small as the Andamanese, and some are fully equal to the average of the species. Their crania, whenever they are met with in a pure state, are remarkably long, narrow, and high.... The pure Fijians are perhaps the most dolichocephalic [long-headed] race in the world, and the New Caledonians and the New Hebrideans come near them. In this respect they are therefore as distinct as possible from the Andamanese.... As is well known, the African frizzly-haired races are mostly of moderate or tall stature, but there are among them some, as the Bushmen of the South, and others less known from the Central regions, as diminutive as the Andamanese.” The lecturer then went on to state that although African Negroes were, as a rule, of the long-headed type, yet there were even then indications of the existence of round-headed races in the heart of the continent. In conclusion, it was added that although their very rounded skulls probably formed a special feature of the Andamanese, yet that he regarded the “Negritos,” or group of which that race formed a section, “as representing an infantile, undeveloped or primitive form of the type from which the African Negroes on the one hand, and the Melanesians on the other, with all their various modifications, may have sprung. Even their very geographical position, in the centre of the great area of distribution of the frizzly-haired races, seems to favour this view. We may, therefore, regard them as little-modified descendants of an extremely ancient race, the ancestors of all the Negro tribes.” On the other hand, it was suggested that long isolation and restriction to a confined area might have led to physical degeneration, so that the peculiarities of the Andamanese type might be of comparatively recent origin.