352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



another during a long period of time, as has been developed especially 

 by Blumentritt. 



In this connection it must not be overlooke'd that all these immigra- 

 tions, howsoever many they be supposed to have been, must have 

 come this way from the west. Indeed, a noteworthy migration from 

 the east is entirely barred out, if we look no farther back than the 

 Chinese and Japanese. On the contrary, all signs point to the assump- 

 tion that from of old, long before the coming of Portuguese and 

 Spaniards, a strong movement had gone on from this region to the 

 east, and that the great sea way which exists between Mindanao and 

 the Sulu islands on the north and Halmahera and the Moluccas on 

 the south was the entrance road along which those tribes, or at least 

 those navigators whose arrival peopled the Polynesian Islands, found 

 their way into the Pacific Ocean. But also the movement of the 

 Polynesians points to the west, and if their ancestors may have come 

 from Indonesia there is no doubt that in their long journeys east- 

 ward they must have touched at the coasts of other islands on their 

 way, especially the Philippines. Polynesian invasions of the Philip- 

 pines are not supposed to have closed when a migration of peoples or 

 of men passing out to the Pacific Ocean laid the foundation of a large 

 fraction of the population of the archipelago. It is known that now 

 and then single canoes from the Palawan or the Ladrone islands were 

 driven upon the east coast of Luzon, but their importance ought not 

 to be overestimated. The migration this wav from the west must 

 henceforth remain as the point of departure for all explanations of 

 this eastern ethnology. 



[These statements are well enough for working hypotheses, but actual 

 proofs are not at hand. Ratzel, Berl. Verhandl., etc.j Phil. Hist. Class, 1898, I, 

 p. 33. — Translator.] 



Xow, how are the local differences of various tribes to be explained, 

 when on the whole the place of origin was the same? Is there here a 

 secondary variation of the type, something brought about through 

 climate, food, circumstances? It is a large theme, which, unfortu- 

 nately, is too often dominated by previously-formed theories. The 

 importance of 'environment' and mode of life upon the corporeal 

 development of man can not be contested, but the measure of this 

 importance is very much in doubt. Kowhere is this measure, at least 

 in the present consideration, less known than in the Philippines. In 

 spite of wide geological and biological differences on these islands, 

 there exists a close anthropological agreement of the Indios in the 

 chief characteristics, and the effort to trace back the tribal differences 

 that have been marked to climatic and alimentary causes has not suc- 

 ceeded. The influence of inherited peculiarities is also more mighty 

 here, as in most parts of the earth, than that of 'milieu.' 



