Jnlyb, 1882] 



NATURE 



225 



prevention is better than cure ; and that while these in- 

 industrial homes are indubitably powerful in preventing 

 the formation of criminals, prisons, on the other hand, 

 are just as indubitably powerful in carrying it on ! 



Evening High Schools have been worked in several Ame- 

 rican cities,but hardly with results lendingmuch encourage- 

 ment to increase. One would think, however, that the know- 

 ledge gained at elementary schools by the age of fourteen 

 would lead to a wish for more on the part of many, to whom 

 a library only could not supply it. But free libraries are a 

 great power in the United States. Forty-nine new ones 

 were opened in 1S79, containing 86,779 volumes, making 

 a total of 3842 public libraries of all classes. The cor- 

 respondence with the Bureau of Education on the subject 

 of public libraries far exceeds that on any other sub- 

 ject ; academies standing next, and art and science 

 standing curiously low for a country like America. Yet 

 local feeling varies even on a favourite subject like free 

 libraries, the large manufacturing town of Paterson being 

 without one like so many populous English towns. 



Like free libraries also, agricultural education is a 

 department in which England, notwithstanding the height 

 to which husbandry has been brought there, stands lower 

 than in any other country. 



One can hardly, nevertheless, read this Report without 

 feeling that spite of our shortcomings the advantages are 

 not all on the side of America. Our compactness, plenti- 

 ful supply of thoroughly-trained teachers, and, we must 

 add, higher sense of honour in political transactions, per- 

 haps owing in part also to the close inspection to which 

 the works of every man are subjected here, entitle us to 

 feel how far better we are placed, as far as meeting edu- 

 cational requirements goes, than the thin and scattered 

 families of the United States. 



MALA YO-POLYNESIAN LINGUISTICS^ 



'"THE learned authors have earned the thanks of lin- 

 -*- guistic students by issuing, in a separate form, this 

 important contribution to a better knowledge of the 

 Melanesian and Papuan languages, which was first pub- 

 lished in the eighth volume of the Philological Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Saxon Scientific Institu:e. It forms 

 the first instalment of a series of papers intended to 

 supplement the comprehensive and well-known treatise 

 of H. C. von der Gabelentz, published at Leipzig in i860 

 and 1S73. To the languages dealt with in that work are 

 now added two others : that of Mafor (Niifor). Geehinck 

 Bay, and a dialect current on the Astrolabe Bay Coast, 

 North-East New Guinea, from materials supplied by Van 

 Hasselt and Miklucho-Maclay respectively. To these 

 notices are added the Papuan idioms spoken in the 

 islands of Errub and Maer, Torres Strait, and in Segaar 

 Bay, near Cluer Gulf, South-West Coast of New Guinea, 

 the former by Herr Grube, the latter from data supplied 

 by H. Strausch to the Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologic, viii., 

 pp. 405-18. 



In the introduction, the question of the relations of the 

 Papuan and Malayo- Polynesian linguistic groups is dis- 

 cussed at some length. It is satisfactory to find that the 

 authors seem at last disposed entirely to abandon the 

 views held by the elder von der Gabelentz regarding a 

 possible, if not probable, fundamental unity of these 

 families. The key-note of the objection to this theory is 

 struck in the following paragraph, at p. 4 : — "Assuming 

 that the linguistic affinity were fully established, we should 

 have at once a direct antagonism between anthropology 

 and philology. Two linguistic groups are related ; of the 

 corresponding ethnical groups, one belongs to one, the 

 other to another race of mankind. How is this possible?." 



To many this may seem merely an old-fashioned 



< ' " Bei.ra£e 2ur Kentni; 

 i cheu Scrachen," von G 



r Melanesischen, Mil:ronesischen und Papua- 

 1 der Gabelentz und A. B. Meyer. (Leipzig. 



a priori argument, of no value in itself unless supported 

 by the evidence of facts/which have hitherto pointed at an 

 opposite conclusion. But one of the most firmly esta- 

 blished and universally accepted principles of anthro- 

 pology maintains the evanescent character of human 

 speech as compared with the relative fixity of physical 

 types. Ethnologists are of accord as to the substantial unity 

 of the Iranian, Semites, Berbers, Basques, Georgians, 

 and other members of the so-called Caucasic ethnical 

 stock. Philologists are, on the other hand, equally of 

 accord as to the essential difference of the Iranic, 

 Semitic, Hamitic, Basque, Georgian, and other linguistic 

 groups spoken within this common Caucasian ethnical 

 group. Here we have fundamental racial unity com- 

 bined with organic divergence of speech, and the apparent 

 contradiction is readily reconciled by the doctrine of the 

 far greater permanence of physical, as compared with 

 linguistic types. The race, even notwithstanding the 

 intrusion of foreign elements, remains essentiallv one ; 

 the speech, presumably one originally, owing to its greater 

 evanescence diverges in various directions to such an 

 extent, that all traces of this original unity have long been 

 effaced. 



Coming now to the Oceanic area, where the Papuan and 

 Malayo- Polynesian forms of speech, shown to be funda- 

 mentally one, while the physical forms are confessedly 

 distinct, the case would be entirely reversed. Instead ot 

 physical unity, combined with linguistic disparity, we 

 should have the opposite phenomenon of linguistic'unity 

 combined with physical disparity. Such a phenomenon 

 is certainly neither intrinsically impossible nor altogether 

 unknown to science, as appears, from the Persian-speak- 

 ing HdzeVahs and Aimaks of North Afghanistan, or the 

 French and English-speaking negroes of the New World. 

 But where they occur, such cases are easily accounted for 

 by political supremacy, social contact, superior culture, 

 and other obvious influences. These influences have also 

 been to some extent at work probably for many ages in 

 the oceanic world. The Malays in the west, and the 

 brown Polynesians in the east, both of kindred speech, 

 and both of roving or piratical habits, have in this way 

 influenced numerous Papuan and Melanesian peoples in 

 their respective domains. Hence we find the Tagalas, 

 Bisayans, and even some of the Negrito Aetas of the 

 Philippines, as well as some of the Negrito Samangs of 

 the Malay Peninsula, and most of the Formosan wild 

 tribes speaking various more or less divergent dialects of 

 the organic Malay speech. In the same way the Papuan 

 Motu tribe of the south-east coast of New Guinea, many 

 of the Melanesian Fijians, New Hebrides, and Solomon 

 Islanders are found to be now speaking various more or 

 less divergent dialects of the organic Polynesian speech. 



It was precisely from these misunderstood facts that 

 philologists had generally arrived at the surprising con- 

 clusion that, in point of fact, the Polynesian and Melan- 

 esian languages were essentially one, thus placing anthro- 

 pology and philology in antagonism. The Melanesian 

 and Papuan dialects selected by Hans Conon von der 

 Gabelentz, and again quite recently by the Rev. Mr. 

 Codrington, as the subjects of comparison, were not, 

 properly speaking, Melanesian languages at all, but Poly- 

 nesian forms of speech imposed by the restless Samoans 

 and other Polynesians on these Papuan and Melanesian 

 populations. Obvious instances are the almost pure 

 Papuan Motu people speaking a tolerably correct Samoan 

 diaiect (Rev. W. G. Lawes), and the mixed Melanesians 

 of Fotuna, in the New Hebrides, speaking idioms closely 

 related to the same group. 



But it is remarkable that the reverse phenomenon has 

 not yet been recorded. At least no instance is known to 

 the writer of a distinctly Malay or Polynesian tribe speak- 

 ing a distinctly Papuan or Melanesian tongue. It is more 

 than doubtful whether such a case will ever be discovered 

 in this watery domain, where the Malays and Polynesians 



