130 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 
effectual so long as there were no influences to weaken it, but 
when once a preponderating force came to surround these 
clans, their chance of survival was small, and to prevent 
individual extinction amalgamation presented the path of 
minimum resistance. 
The effect of this amalgamation was to break down the 
primitive methods, and concurrently to infuse new blood, and 
with it to stay, or lessen, the forces that were weakening an 
already over-inbred stock. 
If we refer to certain statistics, as recently as 1840 we find 
that a rough enumeration of the so-called Rock-Veddas 
disclosed that only thirty families in Bintenna then existed. 
Since then the increase ot civilized races pressed with yearly 
greater insistence, till we are forced to conclude that the 
primitive Vedda is now no more, or nearly so. 
In my Paper read at the meeting of the Ceylon Branch of 
the Royal Asiatic Society on September 19, 1914, I have 
described the features of the Vedda family I found at Setawa, 
but I venture here to repeat it for easy reference. 
The man Dissan Hamy is about 5 ft. 10 in. in height, 
thin, small round the chest, with rather short arms, slender 
legs, with hardly any calf development. He does not know 
his age. His head is small, with small dark-brown beady eyes 
set far back in their sockets. His hair is short, not tied in a 
knot, staring, and frizzy. His younger brother is shorter in 
stature, but with the same character of hair on the head. 
The elder has short, scanty, and bristly moustaches, but in 
both brothers there is a marked scarcity of hair on the face 
and body. Dissan Hamy’s two sisters are both of normal 
height, and dress Jike the other women of the country. They 
are about 5ft.3in.in height, with slender limbs. Both women 
are mothers, and both indicated the small breast develop- 
ment that appears to be characteristic of women residing 
in the arid parts of the country I explored. In both women 
the hair is short and frizzy. Their infants had shaved heads. 
I remarked that the skin of Dissan Hamy’s body is darker 
than that of the other members of the family. The nose is 
strongly formed, with thin dilated nostrils. The mouth is 
rather wide, with lips of no unusual thickness. 
