“Comparative anatomy is specially occupied in studying the differences between one man and another, estimating and classifying their differences, and especially discriminating between such differences as are only individual variations (variations which, when extreme, are relegated to the department of the teratologist) and those that are inherited, and so become characters of different groups and races of the human species. Physical anthropology, moreover, extends its range beyond merely comparing and registering these differences of structure. It also occupies itself with endeavouring to trace their cause, and the circumstances which may occasion their modifications. It endeavours also to form a classification of the different groups of mankind, and so to throw light upon the history and development of the human species.” The races towards which special attention was directed in these lectures were mainly those inhabiting the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, namely, the diminutive and degraded Andamanese, the Australians, and their near but very distinct neighbours, the Tasmanians, long since extinct, the Melanesians or Oceanic Negroes, and the Polynesians. With the exception of the latter, which the Professor regarded as an aberrant and somewhat mixed modification of the Malay stock, all these different island races were considered to belong to the black or negroid branch of the human species; and it was suggested that the Andamanese were the purest living representatives of a great “Negrito” stock, which had been formerly widely distributed, and had given rise to the true African negroes on the one hand, and to the Oceanic negroes on the other. As regards his view that the aboriginal Australians are members of the negroid branch, it will be pointed out in a later chapter that an alternative opinion has of late years gained considerable favour among anthropologists. The Hunterian lectures of Flower were, however, by no means restricted to the negro-like races of the islands of the southern oceans. On the contrary, the Professor devoted much attention in the course of the series to the various races to be met with in our Indian dependencies, dwelling especially on the so-called Dravidian (_i.e._ non-Aryan) tribes of the Nilgiris and other districts of southern India, and likewise on the still more remarkable and primitive Veddas of Ceylon. The Mongols, as typified by the Tatars and Chinese, and their relationship on the one hand to the Eskimo, and thus with the “Indians” of America, and on the other with the Malays, were also discussed at considerable length in these lectures.