THE MALAY LANGUAGE. 813 



languished, and the return fell off immediately to one third. Esti- 

 mating the quantity of metal that produces this effect, it was found 

 that the addition of one part of iron was sufficient to determine the 

 production of a weight of plant nearly nine hundred times as great. 

 The suppression of the iron further caused an irreparable loss, for 

 when it was sought to remedy the wilting of the plants by restoring 

 the iron which had been taken from the medium — an experiment 

 which had been successful with higher plants — the attempt was a 

 failure, and the plants could not be prevented from perishing. 



These facts are full of interest in themselves, and they further 

 show well the necessity or utility of iron in plant life, but they 

 teach us no more. They reveal nothing of the mechanism of the 

 action, and if we wish to penetrate further in the matter we always 

 have to turn to animal physiology. — Translated for the Popular 

 Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



THE MALAY LANGUAGE. 



By E. CLYDE FORD, 



PROFESSOR OF GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, ALBION COLLEGE. 



A GENTLEMAN" who had lived for several years among the 

 Indians of the Canadian northwest said that he went among 

 them believing they were an untutored race. But when they told 

 him of a dozen kinds of berries growing in a locality where he knew 

 but two, brought him flowers he could not find after careful search, 

 and around their council fires showed as deep an insight into the 

 mysteries of life as the savants of his university, then he concluded 

 they could no longer be called untutored. 



And why should they be? Is there no culture or civilization 

 outside of the enlightenment of Europe or America? And because 

 a civilization does not exactly fit the grooves in which most of the 

 world has moved, may it not be a real civilization for all that? If 

 such is possible, -then we vote, the Malays a cultured people. Of 

 course, their culture is not like our own ; it knows no railroads, no tele- 

 graphs, boasts of no intricate political machinery, has no complicated 

 social despotisms. Native princes rule for 'the most part over peaceful 

 states, and politics means no more than the regulation of quiet village 

 life. But what need of railroads, when the rivers are avenues of trade 

 and communication ? "Why telegraphs, when the world is bounded by 

 the jungle horizon? Or why, in short, severe civil and social enact- 

 ments, when the common Wahlspruch of life is, " Fear disgrace rather 

 than death"? Such a civilization, we admit, is a humble one; but 



