A DYING RACE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7871, 5 August 1911, Page 5

A DYING RACE

THE SOLOMON ISLANDERS PROFESSOR MACMILLAN BROWN’S OPINION. By Tclegijaph—Press Association—Copyright. SYDNEY, August ‘*4. Professor MacMillan Brown, who has returned here from a visit to tho Islands, stated in an interview that the naiaves of the Solomons were steadily dying out. The only island showing - an increasing population was Malaita, where tho people were still wild. Profesfaor Brown states that the result of tho reduction of population is that there is not enough labour to go round tho plantations. In three or four yeans they will have to import alien labesir, probably from India; and in time tlm Solomons, like Fiji, will become a mesre annex of India. The only thing to save the Islanders, says the Professor, would bo, a-s in the case of the Maoris, to abolish primeval communism, and to adopt steps against too great laxity and idleness. 9 A' MIXED PEOPLE. COMPOUNDED OF A GREAT NUMBER OF RACES. Professor MacMillan Brown is of opinion, from racial characteristics and language, that the Solomon Islanders are a mixture of a great number of races. Ne;groid races came tc the Ishuids, probably in a geological period when tho process of earth elevation was going on, so that they were able to travel almost tho whole way across dry land- Other waves, of Caucasian race, and also from Southern Asia, afterwards swept down over the negroids. During tens of thousands of years waves of various races must have kept coming down. When Polynesia was first populated, the Professor thinks, there may have been, where atolls now were, fairly broad and high islands. Through all human time these may. have been gradually sdnking. Hence camo the practice of abortion, infanticide, and also the knowledge of oceanic navigation. Tho land sinking under them, the people were compelled to go somewhere.