POLYNESIA. By modern geographers, Poly nesia, in its widest extension, has been understood to include the numerous islands which lie in the Pacific to the east of the Philippines, Moluccas, and Australia, and stretch away to within a few tlegre,!s of the west coast of America. So de fined, this oceanic region has been ethnographic ally distributed into Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia proper ; but authors differ greatly in their classifications of its races, and the views of Mr. A. IL Wallace and of Mr. Keane will be found under India. Melanesia, or the area of the black or Papuan, i.e. frizzly-haired, population, includes Papua or New Guinea, and all that continuous insular reach south of the equator, from New Ireland to New Caledonia. Micronesia comprises the l'elew Islands, the Caroline", the Marianne or Ltulrone, and the Tarawa or Kingsinill groups Polynesia proper, extending eastward from Tarawa to \Valli° or Easter Isle inclusive, and from Hawaii north to New Zealand mouth of the equator, comprehends the whole of the inter mediate island•world, with the exception perhaps of the Fiji group. Micronesia, or the Pele• Tarawa region, is covered by the brown race; and Melanesia is the area.of the black race; and there is the intermediate and ambiguous Fiji Islands. Among the inhabitants of Polynesia proper of the ethnographical writers, a similarity of race, language, religion, customs, and government suffi ciently attest identity of origin. Some ethnolo gists, indeed, regard it as established, that the Polynesians proper are sprung from the Malay family. This bold and enterprising people, issuing from Sumatra, their primitive settlement, founded Singliaputw, A.D. 1160, and, about a century after wards, Malacca. The first arrival of Hindus in the Indian Archipelago, if we may trust Javanese annals, occurred about 5.n. 1278. The Malay exodus front the same insular region to Polynesia is conjectured to have taken place after the Hindu influence began to prevail there, and before the arrival of the Muhammadan traders and settlers from Arabia. The presence of the black or Papuan element in the various islands of Polynesia is explicable on the hypothesis that the Indian Archipelago and Malay Peninsula were primitively inhabited by a dark race, exterminated or absorbed by a brown race of Indians, connected perhaps with the woolly-haired tribes still known to exist in the mountain range which traverses the eastern side of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. In
support of this, or a not dissimilar hypothesis, Professor Latham refers us to a proximately black variety among the existing populations of Protonesia, the Malayan Peninsula, and Indian Archipelago, from whose inferior social position and restriction to the interior and more imprac ticable parts of the island, he concludes that the Protonesian blacks are the descendants of the older occupants. The of all the islands of the Pacific continental group is presumed to date from Oceanian migration, which has been laid down in the following order,—.Malayan, Protonesian, Papuan, Polynesian. When Cook explored the Society Islands, they possessed 1700 war canoes, manned by 68,000 men ; but now the total population of the group is said to be only 9000! Yet Mr. Wallace is of opinion that `Polynesians may be civilised without being exterminated, if they be protected from the rude competition, the vices, and the diseases which free intercourse with the ordinary class of Thiro peons invariably brings upon them.' Tahiti has not enjoyed that protection, and the result is that the population is fast dwindling. Misguided missionary zeal is charged by Mr. Wallace with having contributed to this result, by forbidding the idyllic festivities of former ages. The con sequence is that the fermented juice of the orange lins taken the place of the indigenous dances of tho past. As Tahiti is French, so the Sandwich Islands are Ameriainized. According to Mr. Wrillft•-e the effects of the new civilisation have been dubious in both. He charges part of the result on the missionaries of the Congregatidnal denomination of the United States, for having represented Christianity as a severe legal Jewish religion, deprived of its dignity, beauty, tender ness, and amiability.'—A. R. Wallace, ii: p. 227 ; Diet. ; Westminster Review, April 1862 ; . Peschel ; ; Captain Elphiustone ; Erskine's Western Pacific.