﻿NOTES T 53 



"Another thing about the Malay: Wallace said that he is quiet, 

 stolid, and brooding-. I do not know where Wallace kept his ears 

 during his eight years in Malaya. They are polite and reserved be- 

 fore strangers and (he older nun are certainly quiet ; but the younger 

 nun are as noisy as any people 1 have ever met, quite the equals of 

 the Africans. The noise and pandemonium that arises from this 

 small schooner of mine would awaken the dead. Some one or all of 

 them are singing or shouting or talking at the top of their lungs 

 from dawn to nine o'clock p.m., excepting during the heat of the day, 

 when they all sleep. 



" No children, neither Malay, Chinese, nor Kling, are noisy and 

 disorderly like those of civilized races. It is really quite sickening 

 to watch the boys coining out of the Raffles government school, — 

 Chinese, half-caste, Malays, etc., all mixed up, walking out quietly 

 and getting into rickshaws and garries and going along smug and 

 clean. Nobody fighting, none of the scraps, couples in the gutter, 

 tearing each other's clothes and hair — all of which gladden the 

 bystander's eye as he watches the boys piling out of an English or 

 American school, and which show the innate and pent-up energy 

 of the race. But I think the depressing sameness and hotness of the 

 climate has much to do with it ; nobody has any energy to spare. The 

 native of Hindustan seems gloomy by nature. The over-population 

 of the country and periodical famines, etc., acting during many cen- 

 turies, may be regarded as the cause of this. The Malay is not 

 gloomy, but is rather a happy individual. Leaving out Java with its 

 dense population, the Malay has the easiest and pleasantest life of 

 any race. Hardly anywhere in his habitat is food scarce, and it is 

 generally very easily obtained. I have not a very high opinion of the 

 brain-power of the average Malay; but a Chinaman's brain is a sort 

 of unawakened, or rather undeveloped, virgin soil of unimagined fer- 

 tility. When China does awake, the world will be surprised; but 

 I think the awakening will be by separate atoms, not as one mass, 

 as was the case of Japan." 



Materials Pertaining to Medicine 

 The Division of Medicine of the United States National Museum 

 desires information and objects illustrative of the notions of the 

 Filipinos, as well as of other Eastern peoples, concerning the origin 

 and nature of disease and the methods of cure or prevention. The 

 classification of remedies given below may be sufficiently suggestive 

 of the kind of material wanted. Magic medicine will probably he 



