460 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 



frequently met with. On the sea coast, there the habitat of tlie 

 Malay race, the houses are large, and erected on high stakes, often 

 over high-water mark of the strand. Similar constructions are 

 found in Borneo, and the islands of the Malay Archipelago. 



CnUii-atioii of the Soil. — In this matter also considerable 

 diflerence exists between the two races. The social tendency of 

 the Malays is very conspicuous. They act much on the co-opera- 

 tive system, with their family plantations often united. Extensive 

 tracts of giound will be cultivated by a tribe or family. The 

 Papuan, on the contrary, jealously guards his individual plot or 

 garden, and surrounds it with a fence, however small or large it 

 may be. Among the Malay population, the males chiefly perform 

 the agricultural work, while the Papuans leave that and other 

 manual labour to women and girls. To help to support the male 

 portion of a family, a young girl will be early espoused to a boy, 

 and be required to provide food for her little prospective husband. 

 The Papuan women are skives or beasts of burden in the family, 

 but the Malay-Polynesian females are treated with considerable 

 deference and regard. They generally manage to hold their own, 

 and a little over. The agricultui'al implements are of a very 

 primitive order among all the Polynesians ; a long wooden dibble 

 performs the work of plough and mattock. The Papuan some- 

 times uses a cocoanut shell to shovel up the earth, though this 

 operation is more frequently performed by the bare hand. To this 

 cause may be attributed the horny hands and thick knuckles of 

 the females. They carefully crumble the earth in their hands, 

 and by a similar manipulation spread it smoothly, patting it down 

 and brushing it over with the palms. Their gardens are generally 

 cleanly and well kept. There is, of course, a vast difference in 

 fertility between the soil of volcanic and coral islands. 



Social Life. — The diversity in the habits of the two I'aces is 

 more strikingly apparent in the family and social life than in any 

 other respect ; and no one at all acquainted with the usages of 

 each would confound one race with the other. Among the 

 Malayans the infant is carefully nourished and nursed by its 

 mother, and in its early years the child is the mother's special 

 care, though both parents are remarkably fond of their children. 

 The birth of a child makes very little difference to the Pajjuan 

 mother. During pregnancy some care is shown her, lest any 

 injury should happen ; but a few days after giving birth the 

 poor woman has to go off to her daily toil as usual, and the father 

 stays at home to nurse the child, and feed it with the expressed 

 juice of a cocoanut ; or should he feel more disposed to go out 

 fishing or feasting, &c., the mother must bind the infant to her 

 back while engaged in her work in the plantation, or gathering 

 firewood, or however occupied. On the birth of a child, the 

 mother loses her own name, and is now called the mother of so-and- 

 so — whatever the child may be named. Here we recognise a 



