30 The Malay Archipelago. 



islands in the Archipelago, without constant reference to these 

 generalizations which add so much to their interest. Having 

 given this general sketch of the subject, I shall be able to show 

 how the same principles can be aj^plied to the individual isl- 

 ands of a group as to the whole Archipelago, and make my 

 account of the many new and curious animals which inhabit 

 them both more interesting and more instructive than if treat- 

 ed as mere isolated facts. 



Contrasts of Races. — Before I had arrived at the conviction 

 that the eastern and western halves of the Archipelago be- 

 longed to distinct primary regions of the earth, I had been 

 led to group the natives of the Archipelago under two radi- 

 cally distinct races. In this I differed from most ethnologists 

 who had before written on the subject, for it had been the al- 

 most universal custom to follow William von Humboldt and 

 Pritchard in classing all the oceanic races as modifications of 

 one type. Observation soon showed me, however, that Ma- 

 lays and Papuans differed radically in every physical, mental, 

 and moral character ; and more detailed research, continued 

 for eight years, satisfied me that under these two forms, as 

 types, the whole of the peoples of the Malay Archipelago and 

 Polynesia could be classified. On drawing the line which 

 separates these races, it is found to come near to that which 

 divides the zoological regions, but somewhat eastward of it; 

 a circumstance which appears to me very significant of the 

 same causes having influenced the distribution of mankind 

 that have determined the range of other animal forms. 



The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both 

 is sufficiently intelligible. Man has means of traversing the 

 sea which animals do not possess, and a superior race has 

 power to press out or assimilate an inferior one. The mari- 

 time enterprise and higher civilization of the Malay races have 

 enabled them to overrun a portion of the adjacent region, in 

 which they have entirely supplanted the indigenous inhabit- 

 ants, if it ever possessed any, and to spread much of their 

 language, their domestic animals, and their customs far over 

 the Pacific into islands where they have but slightly, or not 

 at all, modified the physical or moral characteristics of the 

 people. 



I believe, therefore, that all the peoples of the various isl- 



