OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 449 



expected that isolated populations would remain in a stationary condition through 

 longer periods of time than the inhabitants of continents. Immigrants, presump- 

 tively, from original continental homes, their posterity would be expected to reflect 

 the condition of their ancestors at the epoch of their migration, since the proba- 

 bilities of retrograding in knowledge would be at least equal to those of progress, 

 under the physical limitations with which they wci'e subsequently surrounded. 

 These hindrances would tend to preserve their domestic institutions within narrow 

 limits of change. 



Dr. Prichard's classification and description of the assemblage of nations in- 

 habiting Oceanica will bring them before us in their proper relations. " The 

 inhabitant of Oceanica," he remarks, " divide themselves into three groups. * * * 

 The first is the race termed by diff'erent writers Malayan, Polynesian, and Oceanic. 



* * * I shall term these people the Malayo-Polynesian, or, in short, the Malayan 

 race. * * * The second group consists of tribes of people of darker complexion, 

 with hair crisp, and more or less resembling African negroes. * * * I shall call 

 them Pelagian negroes. They have often been called Papuas. * * * A third dis- 

 tinct group consists of tribes who diff"er in physical characters from the two former. 



* * * They are savages of dark color, lank hair, and prognathous heads. To this 

 group the natives of Australia belong. I shall term them collectively Alforas." * * * 



" The Malayan stock may be subdivided in a manner that will facilitate the 

 description, into three branches. The first branch is the Indo-Malayan, compre- 

 hending the Malays proper of Malacca, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago, 

 as the inhabitants of Sumatra, Java, Celebes, the Moluccas, and the Philippines. 

 The last nations resemble the proper Malays both in language and in physical 

 characters much more nearly than they do the Polynesian tribes. To the Indo- 

 Malayan branch may, perhaps, be associated the nations of the Caroline Islands, 

 and the Ladrones, who appear to be nearly related to their neighbors, the natives 

 of the Philippines. To the second or Polynesian branch belong the Tonga Island- 

 ers, the New Zealanders, the Tahitians, and the Hawaii ; these are the four prin- 

 cipal groups of the Polynesian family, arranged according to the indications of 

 their languages. The third branch are the Madacasses, or people of Madagascar.'" 



The Rev. Artemus Bishop, an American missionary, resident during the last 

 forty years at the Sandwich Islands, thus remarks upon the Polynesian branch of 

 the Malayan family, in a letter to the author, dated in April, 1860, at Honolulu: 

 " It has been pretty well ascertained that the Polynesian race is not from Northern 

 Asia, but from the Indian Archipelago. They are the same people as the Malays, 

 and include, also, the inhabitants of Madagascar. In the Pacific, among the west- 

 ern islands, they pass into another race who speak a radically diff'erent language, 

 in which enter many words of Polynesian origin. But through the Eastern and 

 Southern Pacific they belong to the same branch. The same contour of features, 

 the same structure of sentences in the language, and in perhaps half the words or 

 more, the same words in their radical letters, but slightly varying by the omission 



> Nat. Hist, of Man, 326-328. 



57 April, 1870. 



