Crawford. — On Maori Ancestry. 415 



Gothic Lombard and the Greek Neapolitan. Greece has retained 

 its old language with very little change ; but the population must 

 have been much modified by importation of Albanians, a 

 Sclavonic people. Malta is peculiar. In Valetta, Italian is 

 spoken, but outside the capital the language is, I understand, 

 Phoenician, a tongue which I do not understand. It gives one 

 the idea of being like Arabic, but I suppose it to be older than 

 that language as now spoken. A pure-blood Maltese has a 

 peculiar form and features. He is not like an Italian, nor is he 

 like an Egyptian. The argument from language may connect 

 him with Tyre, or with Carthage, and possibly this descent may 

 be in the main the true one. 



In Eussia we find people as fair and as intelligent as German, 

 and others as swarthy as Tartars, which they are. Both speak 

 the Eussian language ; but the former are Aryans, which the 

 latter are not. 



Let us see where the argument from language may lead us : 

 A passenger, without previous knowledge of European history, 

 arrives at Jamaica, and asks who the inhabitants are. He is 

 told they are English, and he finds that they speak English, 

 and are proud to call themselves ' * Englishmen." They tell him 

 how their countrymen, Lord Nelson, Duncan, Howe, and Jervis, 

 " licked " the French and the Dutch, and, though caring most 

 for naval victories, still admire the Duke of Wellington, and 

 brag of what "we" did at Waterloo. Nevertheless, these dark- 

 skinned Englishmen are not Aryans — the language gives them 

 neither the form and features nor the mental qualities. In- 

 stances of a similar kind might be multiplied, but the above 

 will suffice. 



Now, I will proceed to take a further view of the question 

 of descent. Colour is generally looked upon as a matter of 

 climate, but I think that is a theory which will not bear in- 

 spection. There may be said to be three well-defined colours 

 in the human race, viz. : the white, the black, and the brown, 

 the latter including the red and the so-called yellow. 



The white man resident in the tropics may become much 

 burnt by the sun ; but his progeny is no darker than that of 

 other people. Against this may be put the fact that many of 

 the Aryans of India are very dark ; but this has perhaps been 

 mainly caused by intermarriage with Turanian races. The 

 Parsees and the high-caste natives of India are dark, but they 

 are not black ; although the Indian Portuguese, from constant 

 intermarriage with black races, are now very black. The negro 

 seems very persistent in colour. He is as black, after many 

 generations in the temperate regions of America, as when his 

 ancestors left the shores of Africa, and his mental characteristics 

 are similar. The brown races seem also to be persistent in 

 character. China extends from tropical to almost arctic regions. 



