.] The problem, though it appears simple
enough, has become complicated more and more through the progress
of discovery, especially since Cook enlarged our knowledge of the
oriental island world. A new and still more pregnant contrast then
thrust itself to the front in the fact that the blacks and the
lighter-colored peoples are each separated into widely differing
groups. While the former hold especially the immense, almost
continental, regions of Australia (New Holland) and New Guinea, and
also the larger archipelagos, such as New Hebrides, Solomon Islands,
Fiji (Viti) Archipelago--that is, the western areas--the north and
east, Micronesia and Polynesia, were occupied by lighter-colored
peoples. So the first division into Melanesia and Polynesia has
in latest times come to be of value, and the dogma once fixed has
remained. For the Polynesians are by many allied to the Malays,
while the blacks are put together as a special ethnological race.

For practical ethnology this division may suffice. But the scientific
man will seek also for the blacks a genetic explanation. The answer
has been furnished by one of the greatest ethnologists, Theodor Waitz,
who, after he had exposed the insufficiency of the accepted formulas,
came to the conclusion that the differentiation of the blacks from
the lighter peoples might be an error. He denied that there had been
a primitive black race in Micronesia and Polynesia; in his opinion
we have here to do with a single race. The color of the Polynesians
may be out and out from natural causes different, "their entire
physical appearance indicates the greatest variability." Herein the
whole question of the domain of variation is sprung with imperfect
satisfaction on the part of those travelers who give their attention
more to transitions than to types. Among these are not a few who have
returned from the South Sea with the conviction that all criteria
for the diagnosis of men and of races are valueless.

Analytical anthropology has led to other and often unexpected
results. It has proved that just that portion of South Sea
population which can apparently lay the strongest claim to be
considered a homogeneous race must be separated into a collection
of subvarieties. Nothing appears more likely than that the Negritos
of the Philippines are the nearest relatives to the Melanesians, the
Australians, the Papuans; and yet it has been proved that all these
are separated one from another by well-m