AS A TEST OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 103 



would seem, the country thinly occupied by a weak but cunning race of savages, who 

 disappeared before them — doubtless in part exterminated and in part absorbed by the 

 new population/ That these savages were of the negrito race, of whom a remnant sur- 

 vived in Tasmania, there can hardly be a doubt. How the Dravidian voyagers reached 

 the Grulf of Carpentaria may be readily imagined. From the earliest times of which we 

 have any knowledge, the pre- Aryan inhabitants of Hindostau, who were and still are 

 bold navigators, were accustomed to visit the East Indian islands in considerable numbers. 

 They were wont to limit their trading voyages to the nearer and more populous Malai- 

 sian islands.- But it may easily be understood that if any event, such as the Aryan 

 invasion of India, had caused an unusually large emigration from that country, some of 

 the more determined emigrants, seeking a new and scantily peopled region for settlement, 

 might have pushed on eastward, through the straits dividing New Gruinea from Austra- 

 lia, until they found a sufficiently iuAÙting shelter in the harbours of the Carpentarian 

 gulf. 



The evidence of language seems to confirm this view. The similarity between the 

 Dravidian and Australian languages, especially in their pronouns (which in some 

 dialects of the two are almost identical), seems too great to allow us to suppose a longer 

 separation of the two branches than that which has existed between the Asiatic and 

 European Aryans. The fact that the entrance of the emigrants was, as Mr. Howitt sees 

 reason to believe, by way of the northern gulf and down the eastern coast, seems to be 

 shown by the circumstance that the languages of that coast retain most largely the com- 

 plex Dravidian forms, which gradually lessen and become simpler as we go westward — 

 precisely as the Polynesian grammar becomes simpler as we go farther from Malaisia, or 

 as the grammar of the ancient Aryan languages is simplified as we advance from eastern 

 to western Europe. 



And here we return to a question of linguistics, which has been already noticed, 

 but which requires, perhaps, a fuller discussion. "When it was first discovered that the 

 languages spoken by many barbarous tribes possessed a singular capacity for expression 

 and a vast variety of forms for nicely discriminating the differences of objects and of 

 ideas, an explanation was f>roposed which seemed plausible and was at first accepted by 

 many reasoners. These elaborately constructed languages, it was suggested, indicated 

 that the people who spoke them were the descendants of a more civilized race, and had 

 simply retained their ancestral language while losing in other respects their ancestral 

 culture. But further reflection and inquiry showed that this explanation could not be 

 deemed satisfactory. If refinement of language is a product of culture, it was naturally 

 asked, why should it not be lost with other like products ? If conjugations and declen- 

 sions, substantive verbs and abstract terms, are due to civilization, like the smelting of 

 metals, the weaving of cloth, the architectural and pictorial arts, why should these lin- 

 guistic achievements be retained when all the other gains of high cultivation have been 



1 A. W. Howitt, " Migrations of the Kurnai Ancestors," in the 'Journal of the British Anthropological Insti- 

 tute ' for May, ISSti, p. 411 ; A. L. P. Cameron, in same journal for May, 18S5, p. 368. 



■^ See the facts relating to the Telugu or Telinga people, cited by Prof, van Rhyn in his learned article on the 

 " Races and Languages of India," in the ' American Encyclopœdia,' vol. ix, p. 215. " They are good farmers, and 

 many of them were formerly seafaring men, undertaking long voyages. They held at one time large islands in 

 the Eastern Archipelago." 



