“It can only afford certain indications, valuable as far as they go, from which a provisional, or approximative system may be built up. Very many, indeed the majority of the islands, are totally unrepresented in it; others are illustrated by only one or two individuals.” “Were the collection anything like representative,” it is added later, “it would probably be found possible to distinguish the natives of each island, or, at all events, of each group of islands, by cranial characters alone.” Special attention was in this course directed to the Australians on the one hand, and to the frizzly-haired Melanesians, or Oceanic Negroes (as distinct from the straight-haired Polynesians) on the other. That the Melanesians were the primitive denizens of the greater part of Oceania, and that the original area they once inhabited has been much circumscribed by Polynesian invasion, the lecturer was fully convinced; and the great difficulty of distinguishing in some instances to what extent this invasion has led, in certain cases, to a mixture of the two stocks, was earnestly insisted upon. At the conclusion of his discourse Flower commented very strongly on the urgent need of making anthropological collections in these islands forthwith; and, although perhaps his prophecy of impending extermination was a little exaggerated, it is no less urgent at the present day. “In another half century,” he said, “the Australians, the Melanesians, the Maories, and most of the Polynesians will have followed the Tasmanians to the grave. We shall well merit the reproach of future generations if we neglect our present opportunities of gathering together every fragment of knowledge that can still be saved, of their languages, customs, social polity, manufactures, and arts. The preservation of tangible evidence of their physical structure is, if possible, still more important; and surely this may be expected of that nation, above all others, which by its commercial enterprise and wide-spread maritime dominion has done, and is doing, far more than any in effecting that distinctive revolution.” What are we doing at the present day, it may be asked, to avoid this reproach? If we may judge by the slowness with which anthropological specimens came into the national collections (and it is difficult to select a better test), the answer must surely be, I am afraid, in the negative. Of a still more popular type than the preceding was a lecture on the “Races of Men,” delivered by Flower in the City Hall, Glasgow, on 28th November 1878, and published as a separate pamphlet.