ig8 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



really the type generally distributed through it. As yet 

 we can only say that certain low or outcast tribes in the 

 south seem to resemble those of Chota Nagpur, whether 

 Kolarian or Dravidian in language, which have been 

 examined. Ceylon is the only portion of the great south 

 where a Sanskritic tongue prevails, and though it is always 

 dangerous to argue from language to race, it is tolerably 

 safe to say that if at any one time and in any one 

 province of the south an Aryan colony had settled in 

 numbers anything like equal to those of the natives, they 

 would have succeeded in importing and transmitting their 

 language. It is on the whole, then, improbable that any- 

 where in the peninsula Aryan blood predominates ; yet we 

 are told that in many parts the prevailing type is handsome 

 and neither Mongoloid nor Negroid or Australioid in 

 aspect. 1 It is best to suspend our judgment as to the 

 component elements of these southern people. 



The nasal index is the most characteristic point in the 

 measurements of this type. In the valley of the Ganges, 

 except in Bengal proper, it seems to be the invariable rule 

 that a high caste is distinguished from a low one by the 

 smaller breadth of the nose. Of course this is true only en 

 masse, and not always in the individual ; even in the. Sikhs, 

 reputed (I believe) an extremely homogeneous tribe, this 

 index varies from 55 to 82. Of the naso-malar index I 

 am not disposed to think so highly, at least in its applica- 

 tion to the living. The Chandals in Bengal, and the Doms 

 in Chota Nagpur, come out by that test better than the 

 Khatri of the Punjab. It must also be very difficult in 

 practice. But, as Topinard says, it is well worthy ol 

 further trial. 



The third type is the one usually recognised as Mon- 

 goloid or Turanian, and is prevalent in two of Risley's 

 districts, the Darjiling Hills {i.e., Sikkim and its neighbour- 

 hood), and the Chittagong Hills to the east of Bengal. 

 The northern people are taller and considerably heavier 



1 The Todas of the Neilgherries, for example, who are tall, handsome 

 in feature, and evidently not platyrhine, yet with but little except their 

 physical aspect to dissociate them from other Dravidian-speaking tribes. 



