276 Professor Flower [April 13, 



and Malay races on the east, and the Aryans on the west, which are 

 now so rapidly exterminating andrejjlacing them, are later comers into 

 the land, exactly as, in the greater j^art of the Pacific Ocean, territory 

 formerly occupied by the aboriginal dark, frizzly-haired Negroid 

 Melanesians has been gradually and slowly invaded by the brown 

 Polynesians, who in their turn, but by a much more rapid process, are 

 being replaced by Europeans. 



We now see what constitutes the great interest of the Andamanese 

 natives to the student of the ethnological history of the Eastern world. 

 Their long isolation has made them a remarkably homogeneous race, 

 stamping them all with a common resemblance not seen in the mixed 

 races generally met with in continental areas. For although, as with 

 most savages, marriages within the family (using the term in a very 

 wide sense) are most strictly forbidden, all such alliances have 

 necessarily been confined to natives of the islands. They are the 

 least modified representatives of the people who were, so far as we 

 know, the primitive inhabitants of a large portion of the earth's 

 surface, but who are now verging on extinction. It is, however, not 

 necessary to suppose that the Andaman Islanders give us the exact 

 characters and features of all the other branches of the race. Difierences 

 in detail doubtless existed — differences which are almost always sure 

 to arise whenever races become isolated from each other for long 

 periods of time. 



In many cases the characters of the ancient inhabitants of a land 

 have been revealed to us by the preservation of their actual remains. 

 Unfortunately we have as yet no such evidence to tell us of the former 

 condition of man in Southern Asia. We may, however, look U2)on the 

 Andamanese, the Actus, and the Scmangs, as living fossils ; and by 

 their aid conjecture the condition of the whole population of the laud 

 in ancient times. It is possible, also, to follow Quatrefages, and to 

 sec in them the origin of the stories of the Oriental pygmies related 

 by Ctesias and by Pliny. 



We now pass to the continent of Africa, in the interior of which 

 the pygmies of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle have generally been 

 X)laced. Africa, as is well known, is the home of another great branch 

 of the black, frizzly-haired, or Ethiopian division of the human 

 si)ecies, which does, or did till lately, occupy the southern two-thirds 

 of this great continent, the northern third being inhabited by Hamite 

 and Semite branches of the great white or Caucasian primary division 

 of the human species, or by races resulting from the mixture of these 

 with the Negroes. But besides the true Negro, there has long been 

 known to exist in the southern part of the continent a curiously modi- 

 fied type, consisting of the Hottentots, and the Bushmen — Bosjesmen 

 (men of the woods) of the Dutch colonists — the latter of whom, on 

 account of their small size, come within the scope of the present sub- 

 ject. They lead the lives of the most degraded of savages, dwelling 

 among the rocky and more inaccessible mountains of the interior, 

 making habitations of the natural caves, subsisting entirely by the 



