July 19, 1906] 



NA TURE 



283 



eiiiplovmcm of women as health visitors or in other ways 

 in ron'noetion with th.- carryinsJ out of provisions for public 

 hiallh also appeared on more than one occasion. 



Subjects to be treated from the more specially scientific 

 standpoint fall, as a rule, to Section 1., sanitary science 

 and preventive medicine, or to Section III., physics, chem- 

 istry, and biology. In the former, l-'leet-Surgeon Bassett- 

 Smith suggested various ways in which disease might be 

 disseminated in a paper on present knowledge of the 

 etiology of Mediterranean fever, with special reference to 

 the Royal Navy. The other papers were by Dr. R. S. 

 Marsden, on scarlatina and certain other diseases in rela- 

 tion to temperature and rainfall; by Dr. J. Fletcher, on 

 posl-scarlatiria diphtheria and its prevention ; and by Dr. 

 V . T. Bond, on some points of interest in the treatment of 

 outbreaks of diphtheria. In Section III., besides the dis- 

 cussion on the influence of dust, may be mentioned a paper 

 by Prof. M. Travers, F.R.S., on the absorption of gases 

 iri solids, which showed how, following the analogy of the 

 absorption of carbonic anhydride by carbon, the absorption 

 of water vapour by wool and by cotton varied with the 

 pressure of the vapour up to saturation point, and also 

 how the absorption of water vapour by cotton at the same 

 pressure diminished with increase of temperature. 



Mr. J. H. Johnston described some experiments upon the 

 determination of the amount of organic colloids in sewage 

 and their partial removal by surface action. Mr. J. W. 

 Lovibond sought for a more precise chemical definition of 

 " pure beer," and indicated the use of his tintometer to 

 identify the quality of beers. Dr. Rideal described the 

 effect of copper sulphate in preventing the growth of alg;e 

 in water supplies, and proposed the use of electrolytic 

 chlorine for the purpose. The other papers were of a 

 technical character. 



In an evening lecture Prof. Lloyd Morgan set forth very 

 clearly the distinction to be drawn between the deterioration 

 of the individuals composing a race and the degeneration 

 of the stock, and dealt with the bearing of the theory of 

 evolution upon the question of degeneration. .X popular 

 evening lecture was also given by Baillie Anderson, of 

 Glasgow, on the wastage of human life. 



■•\mple provision was made for the entertainment of those 

 attending the congress by visits to works and institutions 

 in the neighbourhood, as well as by garden-parties or 

 excursions to the numerous places of interest in the district. 

 The excellence of the arrangements and the smoothness of 

 the working were effective testimony to the admirable 

 organisation of the congress as carried out by a local 

 committee with Councillor Colston Wintle as chairman and 

 Mr. T. J. Moss-Flower as secretary, in conjunction with 

 the officers of the .Sanitary Institute, of whom Colonel Lane 

 Notter is chairman of council, Mr. W. Whittaker, F.R.S., 

 chairman of the congress committee, and Mr. E. White- 

 Wallis secretary. 



MIGRATIONS INTO NEARER AND FURTHER 



INDIA.' 

 TT was philologists who first borrowed the name 

 " Dravidian " from Sanskrit and applied it to a well- 

 known family of languages, mostly spoken in southern 

 India, but of which an interesting member, Brahui, is found 

 far to the north-west, in Baluchistan. In the hills of 

 Central India, to the north of the main Dravidian group, 

 there is another and totally distinct family of languages 

 which philologists call " Munda." 



It happens that the speakers of the south-Indian 

 Dravidian languages and the speakers of Munda languages 

 possess a common ethnic type — nose thick and broad, low 

 f.icial angle, thick lips, wide, fleshy face, low stature, figure 

 squat and sturdy, skin dark, and so on. This ethnic typo 

 ethnologists have called " Dravidian," an unfortunate piece 

 of nomenclature, for (i) if language can ever be taken as 

 a criterion of race, speakers of Munda languages are 

 certainly different in racial origin from the speakers of 

 Dravidian, and (2) some speakers of Dravidian languages, 

 the Brahuis, do not possess the so-called Dravidian ethnic 



1 Extension of part of a paper on "The Languages of India and the 

 Unguistic^Survey," read before the Society of Arts on March 15 by 



Dr. G. A. Gri 



NO. 1916, VOL. 74] 



type, but possess that of the Iranians. At any rate, if we 

 put the Brahuis out of consideration for the present, it is 

 better to name the ethnic type " Munda-Dravidian," i.e. 

 the type common to the people known as Mundas and to 

 the people known as " South-Indian Dravidians. " The 

 type is almost certainly a mixed one. Judging from the 

 fact that all Mundas possess it, and that it is not possessed 

 by all Dravidians (witness the Brahuis), the probability is 

 that the Munda-Dravidian ethnic type belongs mainly to 

 the Mundas, and has been acquired through intermarriage 

 by Dravidians originally endowed with a less persistent 

 type. 



When the Aryans entered India they found it inhabited 

 by people of the Munda-Dravidian type. The .Aryans were 

 the more highly civilised, but as they migrated further and 

 further into the country they intermarried with the people, 

 and themselves commenced to acquire their physical 

 characteristics while they retained their own language and 

 customs, which they in turn imposed upon the Munda- 

 Dravidas with whom they came in contact. We see traces 

 of the same interchange occurring even at the present day 

 between the Dravidians and the .Mundiis. The Nahals of 

 the Mahadeo Hills were once a Munda tribe. They came 

 into contact with the relatively more civilised Dravidians, 

 and adopted a mixed speech in which Dravidian pre- 

 dominated. Nowadays this tribe is coming under .Aryan 

 influence, and is adopting an Aryan language. 



It is impossible to say whether the Mundas or the 

 Dravidians, or both, were aborigines of India or not. 

 Assuming that the Dravidians were immigrants, the prob- 

 ability is that they entered the country from the south, and 

 not from the north-west, as was maintained by Caldwell 

 and others. Relationship has been alleged, with some 

 appearance of truth, between the Dravidian languages and 

 those of New Guinea and Australia. This subject has not 

 yet been thoroughly gone into, and is at present under 

 examination, but the above seems to be the conclusion 

 which will most probably be reached. 



As for the Mundas, if they were immigrants, they must 

 certainly have entered India proper from the north-east. 

 Pater Schmidt, of Vienna, who attacked the question from 

 without, and the Linguistic Survey of India, which has 

 approached it from within, have arrived at the same result. 

 There was once a race spread widely over F'urther India of 

 which we find remains amongst the forest tribes of Malacca, 

 in Pegu and Indo-China, and along the M^-kong and Middle 

 Salwin. The languages which they speak are members of 

 what is known as the M6n-Khmer family. Forms of speech 

 closely connected with M6n-Khmer are Nicobarese, Khasi 

 (spoken in the central hills of Assam), and the various 

 Munda tongues of India proper. That there is an ultimate 

 connection between these widely separated languages must 

 now be taken as firmly established by the latest researches 

 of comparative philology. The matter admits of no further 

 doubt. But this is not the limit of the discoveries. The 

 languages of the Himalaya are, !t is well known, Tibetc- 

 Burman in character. Nevertheless, there are dialects 

 spoken on the southern slope of these mountains, from 

 Kanawar in the Punjab almost to Darjeeling, which have 

 a basis similar to this old Munda-Nicobar-Mon-Khmer- 

 Khasi language, that has been, so to speak, overwhelmed, 

 but not entirely hidden, by a layer of Tibeto-Burman. 

 Then, on the other side. Pater Schmidt has shown an 

 intimate connection between M6n-Khmer and the languages 

 of the south-eastern Pacific, so that there is evidence to 

 show the existence in very early times of a people and a 

 group of speeches extending from the Punjab right across 

 northern India and Assam down to the extreme south of 

 Further India and Indo-China, and thence across Indonesia, 

 Melanesia, and Polynesia up to Easter Island, which is 

 not so very far from the coast of South America. 



In India, Nearer and Further, the fate of these speeches 

 has been the same. In Nearer India the Munda languages, 

 which were certainly once spoken in the northern plains, 

 have been driven to the hills by Dravidians or .\ryans. 

 In .Assam and Burmah the Khasis and Mon-Khmers have 

 been either driven to the hills, where they survive as islands 

 in a sea of alien tongues, or else to the coast of Pegu by 

 the Tibeto-Burmans, and in Indo-China the Mfln-Khmers 

 have again been driven to the sea-board bv the Tais. 



