Answer to Mr. Crawford's letter. 142. 



In the Malay Vocabularies of Labillardiere, in the Voyage a. 

 la Recherche de la Perouse, the Committee finds few words 

 that accord with those of Madagascar, but this will prove 

 /lathing in as much as the inflections, intermediate links of 

 the Polynesian branches, would supply the deficiency • for 

 in the same manner, without the points of connection, we 

 should have some troubles at the present day, to prove that 

 our English was only differently inflected inglo-Norman, 

 or that the French was Celto-Italic. 



In the Vocabularies drawn up in Madagascar by Mr. Bo- 

 jer * the Malagash words which are copied in badly written 

 Arabic have a great amount in common with the Polynesian. 

 It is therefore clear that the islanders of the Archipelago, 

 Sumatra, Java, Celebes, the Malaccas and the Philippines, 

 with the Caroline Islands, the Ladrones, or to superadd 

 those of Souga, the New Zealanders, the Talistians and the 

 Hawaii are all of the same stock as the inhabitants of Ma- 

 dagascar. Nothing is so difficult to track as the path of 

 the migration of Nations; after the immense labours of 

 Miiller, Heeren, Thiersch, etc., how little do we positively 

 know of the probable path of the Wanderings of a few 

 Greek tribes. Let us then admit in the words of the only 

 great English Ethnographer when speaking of the Pelagian 

 nations: « Great as the physical difference is between 

 these nations, it will be found by those who give due weight 

 to the evidence offered by late researches into their his* 

 tory, that there is a full and complete proof of the unity 

 of descent in the whole class, and that there is no proba- 



* The original copy of these vocabularies was presented by Mr. Bojer,. 

 through Sir Ch. Colvile, Governor of Manritins to the Asiatic Society, 

 which the\ received according to their answer of 8th June i83a,and 

 promised also to communicate the Vocabulary to the Baron Humboldt. 



