Does the broad-headed element belong to an immigrant people? or,
again (3) Is there an hitherto unidentified indigenous broad-headed
race? I doubt if the time is ripe for a definite answer to any of
these questions. Furthermore, we have yet to assign to their original
sources the differences in culture which characterise various groups
of people in New Guinea. Something has been done in this direction,
but much more has yet to be learnt.

So far I have not referred to a Negrito element in the Ethnology of
New Guinea. From time to time we have heard rumours of pygmy people,
and German travellers have recorded very short individuals in Kaiser
Wilhelm's Land; but it was not till the expedition to Netherlands New
Guinea of the British Ornithological Union of 1910-11 that a definite
pygmy race was demonstrated. I think this can be no longer denied,
and the observations made by German ethnologists show that the race in
a more or less modified state is widely spread. Now Mr. Williamson,
whose work in New Guinea was contemporaneous with that of the
Netherlands New Guinea expedition, adduces evidence that this is
also the case in British territory. It is worth recalling that de
Quatrefages and Hamy (_Crania Ethnica_, 1882, pp. 207-210, 253-256)
distinguish a "Negrito-Papuan" and a "Papuan" element in the Torres
Straits. This problem will be discussed in Vol. I. of the Reports of
the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits. I feel little doubt that
Mr. Williamson has shown strong evidence that the Mafulu and probably
other adjacent mountain tribes are essentially a pygmy--that is to say
a Negrito--people who have been modified to some extent by Papuan and
possibly Papuo-Melanesian influence, both physical and cultural. He
has marshalled his data with great skill, and has dissected out, as it
were, the physical and cultural elements of the Negrito substratum. It
only remains for other observers to study Negritos in other parts of