30 R. Ruaeies Gates anp Gzo. EH. Darsy.—Blood Groups and

accepted. The view that the A blood group is older in origin than B has received further confirmation since it was first put forward. A high percentage of A is characteristic of some primitive and “ peripheral” peoples. The high proportion of A in the Australian natives has recently been confirmed by Cleland (1933) in Central Australia, where he tested 84 and found 38-1 per cent. O and 61-9 percent. A. Recent work on Australian aborigines is of much interest. Without referring to all the papers it may be pointed out that Tebbutt and McConnel (1922) typed 141, obtaining 57 per cent. O, 38-5 per cent. A, the remainder B or AB, but some were not of pure blood. Phillips (1928 a, b) tested natives from New South Wales and Queensland. He found that the full-blood aborigines tested in all previous work numbered 815, from the States already mentioned and South Australia, but none have been tested from West Australia.

These gave O A B AB

456 308 43 8

Per cent. Percent. Percent. Per cent. 56 37°7 5-3 1

Phillips finds that while A is relatively constant (44-51 per cent.) in different tribes, there is a decrease in the amount of B from the most northerly tribes southwards. He finds no B among 158 in South Australia and Cleland found no B among 84 isolated in Central Australia. Phillips points out that no exogamous marriages are permitted outside the tribe, and that. fixed systems of marriage relationships exist. Cleland and Phillips have both suggested that B has been introduced into the north and slowly spread southwards from early times.

Phillips has also tested the blood of 12 full-blooded aborigines against each other by separating the red corpuscles from the serum. All tested O with the ordmary A and B sera, but three of them were aberrant in that one of them agglutinated the corpuscles of the other two. This shows that although Australian aborigines lack both A and B in many cases, yet they have another agglutinogen which is not present in Europeans.

Of equally great interest is the case of the Bushmen (Pijper, 1932). In three tribes of the northern group from South-west Africa to Bechuanaland 615 were tested, giving 56-1 per cent. O, 29-6 per cent. A, 7-5 per cent. B, 6-8 per cent. AB. This relatively high percentage of A combined with the low B confirms that the Bushmen are the oldest and most primitive inhabitants of South Africa. The Bantus (Pijper, 1930) with 19 per cent. of B and negroes with 23-29 per cent. B represent a later spread of the B blood group. No doubt a portion of the B in the present Bushmen has been derived from crosses with their neighbours, and it appears probable that the uncontaminated Bushman population contained only O and A, like the Australians and probably the Lapps of Northern Europe. The fact that the proportion of AB is nearly as high as the B indicates also that the Bushmen got their B through crossing.

A recent paper (Phillips, 1931) on the Maori blood groups indicates that they also were originally high in A but contained no B; while there is some evidence that the Moriori, many of whom the Maoris exterminated when they arrived in New Zealand from Hawaii some 600 years ago, had a considerable proportion of B. Two hundred Maori, mainly from the North