14 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



The primitive aborigines on the Islands in 

 the Bay of Bengal, the Andamans and 

 Nicobars mostly consume it in the raw state. 

 j The Selungs on the Islands off the Burmese 

 coast are still lower in the scale, because they 

 add to it raw fish, and they do not trouble to 

 build houses, but just cover in their canoes 

 with the leaf-fronds roughly tied together over 

 the top so as to form a sort of indifferent 

 shelter against the sun and rain. This raw 

 dietary, when long continued, is the cause of 

 hideous skin diseases and leprosy. We find 

 the same deplorable state of affairs existing 

 on some of the Islands of the Torres Straits 

 and on the outer Atolls in the South Pacific ; 

 and it is among some of these far-off places 

 that we find almost the lowest types of 

 humanity. But there are only fragmentary 

 lots of them left, and these are rapidly dying 

 out and disappearing from our ken. Such 

 people must be reckoned among the casuals of 

 the human race. They just happened, and 

 seem to have escaped or been forgotten in 

 the evolution of mankind ; they never have 

 achieved nor will they achieve anything, but 

 will go on until swallowed back into the 

 unknown with no regret and no tangible 

 evidence of the why and the wherefore. What 

 the sad remnants are, and where they really 

 belong, has ever been a sore puzzle to 

 anthropological researchers. 



The small husbandman of the Isles has, as 



