MELANESIA  , one of the three

great divisions of the oceanic islands in the central and western Pacific . It embraces the Bismarck Archipelago, N.E. of New Guinea, the Louisiade, Solomon, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides and Loyalty islands, New Caledonia, Fiji and intervening small groups . The name (Gr . Ohm, black, and *tor, island) is derived from the black colour of the prevailing native race, the Papuan and its allied tribes . Many of these differ widely from the parent race, but all the Melanesian peoples have certain common characteristics which distinguish them sharply from the inhabitants of Poly., nesia and Micronesia . Their civilization is lower . The Melanesians are mostly " negroid," nearly black, with crisp, curly hair elaborately dressed; their women hold a much lower position than among the Polynesians; their institutions, social, polit' 1 and religious, are simpler, their manners ruder; they have fe or, no traditions; cannibalism, in different degrees, is almost universal; but their artistic skill and taste, as with some of the lower African negroes, are remarkable, and they are amenable to discipline and fair treatment . Their languages, which exhibit considerable difference among themselves, have features which mark them off clearly from the Polynesian, notwithstanding certain. fundamental relations with the latter . See R . H . Codrington, The Melanesian Languages (Oxford, 1885) and The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891); the articles PAPUANS and PACIFIC OCEAN; also those on the several island-groups, &c .