196 



KNOWLEDGE 



[September 1, 1900. 



These are the arrangements by which this marvellous 

 rapidity of telegraphing is carried out. There were many 

 technical difficulties in the way of its realization, but 

 these have all been overcome by the same ingenious 

 methods applied to the details, and one of our illustra- 

 tions (Fig. 5) is an actual reproduction of a message re- 

 ceived at the rate of over 1600 words a minute on a wire 

 some 404 miles in length. The possibilities of this 

 system seem almost infinite. In cases where the number 



Fio. 5. — Pliotograpliii' vepvoduction of an actual me.ssage 

 written bj the Pollak-Virag Telegraph at. tlie rate of 100,000 

 norils per hour. The message consists of tlie U'tt.crs of tlie 

 alphabet A — K repeated continnonsly. 



of wires is limited, such as in a long .submarine cable, 

 the carrying power is multiplied in an astounding 

 manner. Fancy being able to send a column of this 

 magazine, about 500 words, to America in twenty-two 

 seconds. Take an ordinary newspaper of 40,000 words, 

 for example. It would pass over the wire by this 

 system in twenty-five minutes, whilst on the Wheat- 

 stone system it would occupy one hour and forty 

 minutes. With a Morse sounder working as rapidly as 

 the fastest operators could work it would occupy nearly 

 fifteen hours. A message of 500 words occupies about 

 30 yards of slip by the Morse system. The same 

 message by the Pollak-Virag system bai-ely covers a 

 piece of paper measuring 5 feet by 10 inches. 



THE PYGMIES OF ASIA. 



By R. Lydekker. 



So recently as the year 1858, when they wei-e selected as 

 a convict settlement by the Government of India, the 

 group of islands in the Bay of Bengal known as the 

 Andamans were practically cut off from the rest of the 

 world; and no definite knowledge was extant in Europe 

 as to the peculiarities of the natives by whom they 

 were inhabited. It is true that the existence of such 

 aborigines had been ascertained long before, Arabic 

 writers of the ninth century having referred to them, 

 while they were also mentioned at a later date by the 

 Venetian traveller, Marco Polo. Moreover, so far back 

 as the year 1788, the East India Company attempted 

 to form a penal station on these islands, which was, how- 

 over, abandoned a few years later without any accurate 

 information having been obtained with regard to the 

 affinities and characteristics of their aboriginal inhabi- 

 tants. This lack of information with regard to the 

 natives api>ears to have been largely due to the reputation 

 they had gained for ferociousness and hostility to 

 strangers, in consequence of which they were avoided 

 as much as possible by the officials sent to establish 

 the proposed settlement. To a certain extent this was 

 a fortunate circumstance, as it prevented the native 

 race from being contaminated by foreign admixture 

 until a much later period, when competent observers 



were fortunately among those stationed by Govern- 

 ment on the islands. 



A glance at the map of Asia will show that the 

 Andamans have their longer diameter running nearly 

 due north and south, and that they form the central 

 and main portion of a cui-ved chain of islands com- 

 mencing off Cape Negrais — the southern extremity of 

 Aracan — and terminating in the Nicobars ; and it 

 seems highly probable that this chain originally fonned 

 a peninsula, with its axis running parallel to that of 

 Tenasserim. The southei-nmost island of the group is 

 the imperfectly known Little Andaman, while the other 

 three main islands, which are separated from one another 

 by narrow channels, and are respectively named North, 

 Middle, and South Andaman, collectively constitute 

 Gi-eat Andaman. The total length of the latter is 140 

 miles, with a maximum breadth of 20 miles. 



To the anthropologist these islands are of surpassing 

 interest from the circumstance that their native inhabi- 

 tants are the purest representatives of a race of 

 diminutive round-headed, Negro-like people, peculiar to 

 South-eastern Asia, and definitely known elsewhere only 

 in the Malay Peninsula and the Philippine Islands. 

 Even in the Nicobare these Negritos, as they are called, 

 are quite unknown, the natives being more or less 

 closely connected with the Malays. By the older writers 

 the aborigines of the Andamans were universally called 

 " Mincopies,'' but as there is no clue to its origin, this 

 term, which is unknown among the natives themselves, 

 has now given place to the appellation Andamanese. 



Although having the characteristic frizzly, or 

 " woolly," black hair of Negroes, and also agreeing with 

 that type of mankind in the relative proportions of the 

 limb-bones (especially the shortness of the humerus, or 

 upper ann-bone, as compai-ed with the bones of the 

 fore-arm), as well as in the form of the pelvis and the 

 large size of the teeth, yet the Andamanese do not show 

 the characteristic Negro features in their full develop- 

 ment. The jaws, for instance, are less projecting, the 

 lips thinner and not so prominent, and the nose 

 narrower and less flattened ; so that the coarser features 

 of the Negro type may be said to be softened or " toned '' 

 down to a remarkable degree. Whether the Andamanese 

 or the Negro type is the more primitive may be left 

 an open question. A further important point of dif- 

 ference from Afi-ican Negroes is to be found in the 

 shape of the skull, which is of the round instead of the 

 long and narrow type ; the relative breadth is, however, 

 by no means so great as in certain other round-headed 

 races. As regards height, the Andamanese present a 

 very marked contrast to Negroes, some of whom, like 

 the Zulus, are very tall. According to Mr. E. H. Mann 

 (formerly assistant superintendent of the islands), the 

 average height of the men is only 4 feet lOJ inches, 

 and that of the women 4 feet 1\ inches ; the tallest man 

 measured by that observer being 5 feet 4i inches, and 

 the shoi'test woman 4 feet 4 inches. 



The skin does not appear to be absolutely black ; 

 but thei-e is some degree of discrepancy in this respect 

 between the accounts given by different observers. The 

 late Professor V. Ball, who visited the Andamans in 1873, 

 states that the colour of the skin is generally obscured 

 by the red clay, grease, or wood-ashes, with which the 

 Andamanese are in the habit of anointing themselves, 

 and that its real tint is only revealed among the well- 

 washed orphans at Port Blair. In fact, the more an 

 Andaman islander washes himself the blacker he be- 

 comes ! The hair of the Andamanese, like that of other 

 Negritos, is disposed evenly over the scalp in close 



