change, yet the occurrence in the Kowrarega of a considerable number of
words resembling and often identical with those of the known Papuan
languages of Torres Strait,** and which I believe to have been derived
from the latter, seems to indicate a degree of long-continued intercourse
between the two races: for changes in language to so great an extent are
not effected in a short space of time any more than the nearly complete
fusion of two different races which has evidently taken place at the
Prince of Wales Islands. Scarcely opposible to this supposition is the
extreme improbability that the Papuans, who had nothing to gain from so
comparatively inferior a race as the Australian, should be indebted to
the latter for the words common to both found to exist in the Kowrarega
and Miriam languages.

(*Footnote. See the Appendix.)

(**Footnote. As means of comparison I used the Darnley and Murray Island
vocabulary given in Jukes' Voyage of the Fly, also a manuscript one of my
own, which furnishes some additional particulars; some words from Massid
given by Jukes; and a few from Mount Ernest procured by myself.)

Another mode of procedure suggests itself to one endeavouring to trace
the proximate origin of the Australians--and that is, to search the
records of voyagers and others for any traces of such customs, the use of
certain implements, etc., as are supposed to be most characteristic of
these people. Yet, taking, for example, the boomerang* and
throwing-stick,** we find nothing approaching to either of these
instruments in any part of New Guinea yet visited by Europeans: in the
absence of any evidence to the contrary from Timor, they may be
considered as true Australian inventions; and assuming the Australians to
be the descendants of a colony from Timor, the circumstance of the