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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



willing to take out leases." How this may be at the present date 

 the writer is not informed. 



Dr. Hunter, when Director- General'of Statistics to the Govern- 

 ment of India, wrote, in reference to the Scythic and non- Aryan 

 influence in that country, that " proceeding inward to the North- 

 western Provinces, we find traces of an early Buddhist civilization 

 having been overturned by rude non- Aryan races. In Bareilly 

 district, for example, the wild Ahirs from the north, the Bhils 

 from the south, and the Bhars from the west seem to have ex- 

 pelled highly developed Aryan communities not long before 1000 

 A. D." Not a few works upon these Indian tribes have appeared 

 in England, as well as elsewhere, and doubtless much more re- 

 mains to be said about these wonderfully interesting people, that 

 will prove to be of great importance to the science of ethnology. 



A very different appearing people from the Bhils are the 

 natives of Burmah, for in the Burmese we have the characteristics 

 of the Mongoloid types, possessed in common with all the races of 

 Indo- China, including those of the tribes of Tibet and the eastern 

 extremities of the Himalayan range of mountains. As a rule, 



they possess a fine physique, 

 and, as in the case of the Bhils, 

 they, too, are notoriously ac- 

 tive and hardy. In complex- 

 ion they are usually dark, 

 I but never very decidedly so, 

 the common shade of the skin 

 being of a warm, rich brown. 

 Burmans of the typical stock 

 have black hair, that is rather 

 coarse and very abundant, 

 being straight as in the case 

 of the Chinese. Some of the 

 men are pretty well bearded, 

 more distinctly so, indeed, 

 than are their not distant 

 neighbors the natives of Siam. 

 The word " Burma " or "' Bur- 

 mah " is derived from their 

 own name of their race, 

 which is Mran-ma, being pro- 

 nounced Ba-ma, in distinct 

 monosyllabic tone, as their language usually is. In this respect 

 it resembles the dialects of southern China, while in other par- 

 ticulars it exhibits evident Tibetan relations. Soft and flexible 

 almost to a fault, the language of these people is written in letters 

 of a subcircular form in most cases, and for nearly seven centu- 



FiG. 3. A Burmese Mother and her Child. 

 From a photograph. 



