The dates of the four papers on this part of the world shew that
the first preceded the earliest of the other three by as much as
four years; a fact that must be borne in mind when the philological
ethnography of New Guinea and the islands to the south and east of it
is under notice. The vocabularies of each of the authors illustrated
in papers 2 and. 3, more than doubled our previous data--Jukes'
illustrating the language of islands between New Guinea and Australia,
Macgillivray's those of the Louisiade Archipelago.
That there was a hypothesis at the bottom of No. 1 is evident. Neither
is there much doubt as to the fact of that hypothesis being wrong.
I held in 1843 that, all over Oceania, there was an older population
of ruder manners, and darker colour than the Malays, the proper
Polynesians, and the populations allied to them; that, in proportion as
these latter overspread the several islands of their present occupancy
the aborigines were driven towards the interior; that in Australia,
Tasmania, New Guinea &c. the original black race remained unmolested.
This view led to two presumptions;--both inaccurate;