METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 219 



of the Western Pacific/' especially remarks upon 

 the " avidity with which the inhabitants of the 

 polyglot islands of Melanesia, from New Caledonia 

 to the Solomon Islands, adopt the improvements 

 of a more perfect language than their own, which 

 different causes and accidental communication still 

 continue to bring to them; " and he adds that 

 " among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was 

 found by us which did not possess, in some cases 

 still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration 

 in addition to their own, in which they reckon only 

 to five." 



Yet how much philological reasoning in favour 

 of the affinity or diversity of two distinct peoples 

 has been based on the mere comparison of 

 numerals! 



But the most instructive example of the fallacy 

 which may attach to merely philological reason- 

 ings, is that afforded by the Fee jeans, who are, 

 physically, so intimately connected with the ad- 

 jacent Negritos of New Caledonia, &c, that no 

 one can doubt to what stock they belong, and 

 who yet, in the form and substance of their 

 language, are Polynesian. The case is as remark- 

 able as if the Canary Islands should have been 

 found to be inhabited by negroes speaking Arabic, 

 or some other clearly Semitic dialect, as their 

 mother tongue. As it happens, the physical 

 peculiarities of the Feejeans are so striking, and 

 the conditions under which they live are so similar 



