PROGNATHOUS STOCK. 303 



mental inferiority as would militate against a far higher degree of cul- 

 tivation than at present exists among them. 



ON THE PAPUAN AND ALFOUROU BRANCHES. 



Leaving the continent of Africa, and touching at Madagascar, off its 

 eastern coast, we there find a population consisting of various people ;* 

 Hovas, an olive-coloured race, of Malay extraction, and Negroes of 

 Mozambique lineage ; together with a people referable to a race termed 

 Papuan, or Papou, the genuine Madecasse, or Malagasy ; and scattered 

 relics of an Alfourou race, tenanting the interior districts. It is to these 

 two latter races, tribes of which are widely disseminated through the islands 

 of the Malayan Archipelago, the Philippines, New Guinea, and the Caro- 

 lines, which exist in the Malay Peninsula, and divide Australia and Van 

 Diemen's Land between them, that we have now to direct our attention. 

 If the term, Prognathous,-)- of Dr. Prichard, be adopted as the descrip- 

 tive epithet of skulls, the agreement of which, in general contour, 

 necessitates a classification of certain branches of mankind under one 

 common section, of which the genuine Negro is the type, to that section 

 these races must be referred : and, certainly, with regard to the Papuan, 

 there is much to induce physiologists to assign it to the Negro stock, its 

 resemblance to which has obtained for it the name of the Oceanic Negro. 

 In treating upon these two races, it will be more convenient to take each 

 separately : and, first, the Papou. 



PAPUAN BRANCH. Under the term Papous, Papouas, or Papuans, is 

 included a race of men closely approximating to the Negro, and widely 

 distributed, from Madagascar, through the islands of the Malayan Seas ; 

 in many of which, as Waigou, Sallawaty, Gummin, Battenta, and the 

 northern shores of New Guinea, they are intermixed with the Malay 

 family. These are, in fact, Malayo-Papuans,J though termed Papous by 

 Quoy and Guimard, and must be distinguished from the genuine Papuan 

 tribes, inhabiting the interior parts of the north of New Guinea (in contact 

 with the scattered Alfourous), New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville's 

 Island, Bouka, Solomon's Islands, New Caledonia, and the Fidje, or Fejee, 

 Islands, together with Van Diemen's Land and Madagascar, which have 

 been already mentioned. 



The Papous, according to Lesson, are not the aborigines of the Indian 



* Of the Quimos, or Kimos, a nation of white dwarfs, with long arms, said to live in the interior 

 of Madagascar, and of the existence of which, both Commerson and the Count de Modave, governor 

 of the French settlement at Fort Dauphin, declared their belief, we can obtain no information. It 

 appears, that the governor purchased a female slave from the interior, of a pale colour, about three feet 

 high, and with arms reaching to the knees. On this the whole case rests. Sonnerat, who saw the indi- 

 vidual, regarded it as an individual formation. Le Gentil, who was at Madagascar with Commerson, dis- 

 credited the existence of such a race. Blumenbach considers it an instance of individual malformation, 

 analogous to Cretenism. 



+ Having prominent jaws. 



J Homo Papuensis, hybridus ex Neptuniano et Melanino. Fischer. 



