iee Intelligence and Miscellaneous Article;. 



The Guinea grains and Madagascar cardamoms M. Batka con- 

 siders as the productions of two different plants, the former of Al. 

 pinia Granum Paradisi of Afzelius, and the latter of Alpinia mada- 

 gascariensis ; both different from the Alpinia melegneta of Roscoe. 



LXXXIII. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



ON CERTAIN POINTS, HITHERTO UNEXPLAINED, IN THE NATU- 

 RAL HISTORY OF THE PAPUANS, OR ASIATIC NEGROS. 



1"^HE following sketch of the history of the Asiatic Negros, a race 

 of people, who, of late years, have attracted much attention from 

 naturalists and historians, was drawn up in the yc^ar 182S, for the 

 purpose of being annexed to a biographical Memoir of the late la- 

 mented Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, which had been commenced, 

 in the preceding year, in the third volume of the Zoological Journal. 

 That Memoir having been subsequently discontinued, the subjoin- 

 ed article has liitherto remained, unpublished, in the portfolio of 

 the writer. It is now made public in the Philosophical Magazine 

 and Journal of Science, as contributing, in some degree, to fill up 

 a chasm in our knowledge of a very remarkable and interesting va- 

 riety of the human species ; and as offering a view of their ancient 

 location in India and subsequent distribution over the regions south 

 of that country, which, so far as the author's reading has extended, 

 has never before been distinctly promulged, and certainly not in 

 that generality which a careful investigation of the subject appeared 

 to authorize him in giving to it. 



It may be proper to mention, that since the completion of the 

 inquiry, the results of which are summarily given in the following 

 sketch, the attention of the author has been almost entirely with- 

 drawn from subjects of this kind : he is not aware, therefore, whether 

 the conclusions at which he had then arrived, have been in any de- 

 gree either impugned or confirmed by subsequent discoveries; his 

 own knowledge of the subject, at the present time, remaining just 

 what it was when the sketch was originally drawn up. 



The remarks on the existence of a woolly-haired race in south- 

 eastern Asia, which are promised in a note appended to a passage 

 in Sir S. Raffles's Discourse on the Sunda Isles, &c., quoted in the 

 Memoir before alluded to (Zool. Journ. vol. iii. p. 47), but the 

 publication of which, in fulfilment of that promise, was prevented by 

 the discontinuance of the Memoir, it may be well to add, are com- 

 prised in the sketch now given. 



Oct. 4, 1832. 



When the late Sir T. Stamford (then Mr.) Raffles returned to 

 Europe, after having resigned the government of Java, in 181G, lie 

 was accompanied by a young Papuan, or native of New Guinea, 

 whom, in tho (ncceding year, he had rescued from slavery on the 

 island of Bali. On his arrival in England, much curiosity was ex- 

 cited by the young Asiatic, who was the first individual of the 



