Physiognomy of British Columbia Coastal Indians. 31

Asland and regarded as free from European blood, were tested, with results shown in Table 2,
together with those of the Bushmen, and Australian aborigines for comparison.

TaBLE 2.—Blood Groups.

== O A B AB Total.
Maori ... Ss ate oes ee aoe sae 46 26 1 = 73
Percent. ... 090 ae a st be 63 35-6 1-4 = =
MevArawa  s.. Be 508 ue Soe on 49 53 1 24 127
Percent. ... 206 206 200 a oe 38-6 41-7 0-8 18-9 200
‘Bushmen, per cent. ... ba a a0 = 56-1 29-6 7-5 6°8 615
Australian aborigines, percent. ... Be oh 56 37:7 5:3 1 815

The Te Arawa are a group of Maori who lived in proximity with the Moriori survivors.

and are believed to have crossed with them. Their blood grouping is remarkably different,
and the very high proportion of AB can best be explained by numerous crosses having taken
place between A and B individuals in the respective races. That this has happened is confirmed
by the presence of a fair skin and a reddish tint in the hair—characters possessed by the
Moriori—in some of the Te Arawa people.

The recent work with blood groups thus shows that their evidence can throw clear light on
the relationships and history of peoples. The pan-human distribution of the four groups is given
by Routil (1932)—37 per cent. O, 38 per cent. A, 18 per cent. B, 7 per cent. AB. This also
supports the conception that A originated and began its spread earlier than B.

The view appears still to be generally held that A and B originated at a particular time
and place, spreading from that centre by inheritance and migration. This is, however, not
strictly compatible with modern genetical knowledge. The genetical evidence goes to show
that any species of plant or animal produces a particular mutation not once only but repeatedly,
with a certain frequency which is more or less characteristic, some mutations being produced
with a much higher frequency than others. Hach species, as we know it, has the capacity for
producing various mutations with particular frequencies. Thus the innumerable abnormalities
in man which are inherited as simple Mendelian differences, dominant or recessive to the type,
must each have arisen at some time as a mutation in the germplasm. Each has probably
arisen repeatedly as a mutation which recurs with a characteristic frequency of say one in
ten thousand or one in ten million individuals. It will then be transmitted in some of the
descendants of the individual in which it has appeared.

On some genetical grounds it is reasonable to suppose that this capacity for producing
mutations is as old as the species itself and has in fact arisen with the origin of the species,
however that may have occurred! On the other hand, there are reasons for believing that

1 The alternative is to assume that the human line of descent derived its A and B blood groups from their
anthropoid ancestors, since one or both are known to occur in orang, chimpanzee and gorilla. IPf that were
the case, it is difficult to see how the modern human blood grouping could have much significance, but it seems
more probable that they arose independently in human phylogeny, as parallel mutations.