126 Voijage of the Novara. 



these two idioms, and thence, by analogy, between the two 

 races, and discriminate whether those scholars, such as 

 Vatu, come nearer the truth who maintain that the Nicobar 

 language is of Malay derivation with an admixture of foreign 

 words, principally European, or those other students of philo- 

 logy who, as for instance Adelung, hold that the idiom used 

 by these islanders is identical with some of the languages of 

 the Indo-Chinese peninsula. 



At the same time the ethnographer of the Expedition 

 had endeavoured to ascertain by means of a new system 

 of measurements of the human frame, drawn up by himself 

 in concert with Dr. Edward Schwarz, one of the physicians 

 of the Expedition, and with the co-operation and assistance 

 of the latter, various data, such as, when applied to the 

 various races inhabiting the earth, might justify many new 

 and striking conclusions, and ultimately result in definitely 

 fixing the relation, resemblance, or physical dissimilarity of 

 the various races of man. Such a plan makes it much more 

 easy by means of figures, those most undeniable evidences of 

 the results of investigations, to get speedily and accurately at 

 the required results, than by all the most specious theories laid 

 down in the less certain domain of philosophic speculation. 



These measurements, applied at three chief regions of the 

 body, namely, the head, the trunk, and the upper and lower 

 extremities, are intended to be scientifically discussed in a spe- 

 cial memoir,* and we accordingly confine ourselves here to re- 



* " On meaburements as a diagnostic means for' distinguishing the human races, 



