344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



munity a considerable infusion of English or French or Spanish blood. 

 And though, in such a mingling, the blood of one race and the language 

 of another may preponderate, yet even this fact is not perplexing. 

 Apart from history, the speech alone, rightly studied, will indicate 

 with sufficient clearness the origin and the circumstances of the mixture.* 



A striking and indeed crucial test of the decisive value of language 

 in ethnological classification is found in the case of Madagascar. In 

 seeking the origin of its inhabitants we should naturally turn first to 

 Africa; and there, in fact, we find, among the Nubians and the Hamitic 

 tribes of the eastern coast, people bearing sufficient resemblance in 

 shape, features, complexion, and hair, to the natives of Madagascar, to 

 warrant the opinion of their relationship, in the absence of any stronger 

 evidence to the contrary. Remembering, however, that the Arabians 

 in early times had much intercourse with the great African island, we 

 turn to their country and find in the tribes of Yemen a similar resem- 

 blance. "We then, perhaps, consider how readily the swarthy and curly- 

 haired Dravidians of Southern Ilindostan might have found their way 

 to Madagascar, with the help of the northeast monsoon. To decide 

 from which of these probable sources the ancestors of the Madagascar 

 natives were derived, we have recourse to their language ; and we as- 

 certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they were neither Afri- 

 cans nor Arabians nor Dravidians, but Malays. To reach their new 

 abode they had to cross the entire width of the Indian Ocean, a dis- 

 tance of three thousand miles. This origin is a fact which no ethnol- 

 ogist now thinks of questioning ; and the only decisive evidence to 

 establish it is the language of the islanders. It is true, that when we 

 have ascertained this fact by the linguistic evidence, we find ample 

 material in the character and customs of the people to confirm it ; but 

 without the positive test of language this subsidiary evidence would 

 be altogether insufficient as proof of such derivation. No one who con- 

 siders the case of Madagascar can reasonably doubt that in language, 

 and language only, resides the true distinction of races. 



From the great number and the marked peculiarities of the lin- 

 guistic stocks of this continent, America may be considered to ofl^er by 

 far the best field for the study of scientific ethnology. This fact was 

 early apparent to that remarkable group of philologists, among whom 



* Against this comparison of the linguistic stocks with the chemical elements (which 

 is ofifered, of course, merely as an illustration, and not as an exact parallel), it may be 

 objected that, according to the latest theory, these elements are all merely allotropic 

 forms of a single substance. But, in fact, if the truth of this theory should be estab- 

 lished, it will only serve to make the force of the illustration still more striking. In a 

 " vice-presidential address," on the " Origin of Languages," delivered before the section 

 of Anthropology in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (and 

 published in the " Proceedings " of the Association for 18S6), I endeavored to show 

 in what manner all the linguistic stocks have probably originated from a single primi- 

 tive language. Both theories, it may be added, simply exemplify the tendency of science 

 to trace back all varieties to unity. 



