i9°5] METZGER— THE FILIPINO. 7 



who has given this considerable study, when he says: "Absence 

 of a large number of Malayan groups would indicate that the actual 

 connection with Borneo, which seems necessary for the introduction 

 of the Malayan types of mammalia, with the large proportion of 

 wide-spread continental genera of birds would seem to imply that 

 greater facilities had once existed for the migration from Southern 

 China, at which time the ancestors of that peculiar deer seen in 

 Samar and Cebu entered the islands." It, therefore, seems impos- 

 sible to understand this existing fauna unless it can be assumed that 

 island connection must have existed. Accepting this theory, why 

 then should not primitive man have made his ingress from Borneo 

 or Continental Asia? This question of the aboriginese is indeed a 

 field for research and is one for the ethnologist and not the province 

 of a mind inexperienced in this line of study., 



Conceding for the present the Negrito to have been the aborig- 

 inal inhabitants, we have as yet to discover any signs or writings 

 of an early day which might lead us to a solution of the origin of 

 this strange tribe. We have, however, characters, many of which 

 are hieroglyphical, of the ancient Tagalog, Visayan, Yliocano, 

 Pampango, Pangasinan and Tagbanua. These characters were ex- 

 pressed or inscribed on tubes of bamboo, with some pointed in- 

 strument the nature of which is as yet unknown, and like the 

 present-day dialects of the several tribes there seems to have been 

 a great preponderance of consonants and a very limited vocabulary. 

 A comma above a letter, should it be a consonant, gave it the sound 

 of having been written with an E or I, and if below as O or U. 



Upon the conquest of the archipelago by the Spaniard their 

 alphabets were abandoned by many and the Spanish or the original 

 of the present mongrel dialects were adopted and after a period of 

 three hundred years there is scarcely a person to be found who can 

 either read or write in the original characters. This, however, is the 

 field of the paleographer but, I believe, is worthy of mention in this 

 connection. The adoption of the Spanish language by some of the 

 tribes was the first step in the domestication of these people, in 

 that it permitted the placing of the Doctrina in their hands with 

 the consequent closer affiliation. (For those wishing to further in- 

 vestigate these early languages of the Filipino, I would refer them 

 to the writings of the Agustinian father Marcilla, and especially 

 his " Estudio de los antigues alfabetos Filipinos.") 



