rU MsLJoi^YsiddeU— Wild Trvbes of the Brahmaputra Valley. [ITov., 



found gooral and serow are foliud altliough generally'looked for only in 

 the higher hills. I think it will probably be found that N. suiaatrensis 

 and iV. btihalinns are one slightly vaiiable npecies as Blaiiford is inclined 

 to suggest. All intermediate specimen is recoided by him as having 

 been shot in Uarjeeling by General Kinloch, 



4. On a collection of Birds from Manipur, — By Lieut. H. H. 

 Turner. Gommunicnted by the Natural History Secretary. 



The paper will be published in the Journal, Pait II. 



5. The Physical Types and Affinities of the Wild Tribes if the Brahma- 

 putra Valley. — By Major L. A. Waddem,, LL.D., I. M.S. 



(Abstkact.) 



Few of the wilder parts of the world, still left, preserve such a 

 vast variety of savage tribes of such great ethnological interest as the 

 mountainous valley of the mighty Brahmaputra in its course from 

 Lower Tibet to the Bay of Bengal. 



This hilly reiiion standing up between China, India, Tibet and 

 Burma has come to be the last refuge of scattered families of the more 

 primitive hordes from 'each of these countries. Driven into these wild 

 glens by the advitnce of civilization up the plains and lower valleys, 

 these families have been hemmed in among the mountains, where 

 pressing on each. other in tl.ij^ir strugsjjle for existeijce they have deve- 

 loped into innumerable isQlated tribes, differing widely in appearance, 

 customs and language; an,d. many of. them are of that extremely bar- 

 barous type which is popularly associate.d with savage South Africa. 



The little that is knqwn about them is just sufficient to show that 

 many of them are in a m,uch more primitive condition than the wildest 

 tribes of India; and that here, almost at our very doors, is a unique 

 mine of unexplored material for yielding that very kind of unrecorded 

 information which European scientists have shown the urgent necessity 

 for fixing without delay, in order to solve may important pi-obleras on 

 the origins of human customs and civilization ; and in search of such 

 material they have been ransacking the few remaining wilder parts of the 

 world, before the surviving traces of prehistoric usage are irretrievably 

 lost to the world. 



Unfortunately for science, however, this unique mass of material 

 in the Brahniapntra Valley, is also being allowed to disappear un- 

 recorded. Of late years, and especially since our annexation of Upper 

 Burma, the greater portion of this region is being opened out. Roads 

 and railways are being rapidly pushed through amongst these hills, and 

 tjje tribes which have hitherto been isolated from the outside world 



