Again, from the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra it extends over the great fan of darker peoples, from Africa, west and south, to New Guinea, Melanesia, and Australia, together with New Zealand alone of Polynesian islands--a fact possibly showing it to have belonged to some earlier race of colonists.

Thus in all of the great geographical areas the bull-roarer is found, and that without reckoning in analogous implements like the so-called "buzz," which cover further ground, for instance, the eastern coastlands of Asia.

Are we to postulate many independent origins, or else far-reaching transportations by migratory peoples, by the American Indians and the negroes, for example?
No attempt can be made here to answer these questions.

It is enough to have shown by the use of a single illustration how the study of the geographical distribution of inventions raises as many difficulties as it solves.
Our conclusion, then, must be that the anthropologist, whilst constantly consulting his physical map of the world, must not suppose that by so doing he will be saved all further trouble.

Geographical facts represent a passive condition, which life, something by its very nature active, obeys, yet in obeying conquers.