Chapter 456

[←446]

Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology were the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with hair. They were the last descendants in a direct line of the semi-animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however, considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks—e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Âryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc.

The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of Adelaide are very hairy, and the brown down on the skin of boys of five or six years of age assumes a furry appearance. They are, however, degraded men; not the closest approximation to the “pithecoid man,” as Hæckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of these men are a Lemurian relic. (Cf. Esoteric Buddhism, pp. 64 et seqq.)