PACIFIC RACES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1198, 5 August 1911, Page 5

PACIFIC RACES.

LIGHT ON THEIR ORIGIN. PROFESSOR BROWN'S RESEARCHES. By TclecrapU—Press Association— CoDyritsht Sydney, August 1. Professor MacMillan Brown, who has returned here from a visit to tho Islands, stated in an interview that tho natives of tho Solomons were steadily dying out. Tho only island showing an increasing population was Mjilaita, whero tho people were still wild. Professor Brown states that tho result of tho reduction of population is that there is not enough labour to go round tho plantations. In threo or four years they -will have to import alien labour, probably from India; and in timo the Solomons, like Fiji, will become a mero annex of India. ' Tho only thing to save tho Islanders, says the Professor, would be, as in, tho cas9 of tho Maoris, to abolish primeval comjnnnism, and to adopt steps against too great laxity and idleness. Judging from their racial characteristics and language, the Professor is of opinion that the Solomon Islanders ar© a mixture of a great number (5f races. Negroid races came to tho Islands, probably in a geological period when the process of earth elovation was going on, so that they were able to travel almost tho whole way across dry land. Other waves of Caucasian races, also from Southern Asia, afterwards swept down over the negroids. During tens of thousands of years waves _ of various races must havo kept coming down.

When Polynesia, was first populated, the Professor thinks, there may have been, whew atolls now were, fairly broad and high islands. Through all human time these may havo been gradually sinking. Hence came the practice of abortion, infanticide, and. knowledge of oceanic navigation. The land sinking under them, they yere compelled to go somewhere.