Jan. 13, 1881] 



NA TURE 



251 



pre-Malays or Caucasian Indonesians, are here intruders. 

 Intruders from where ? Obviously from where the type 

 exists, the neighbouring Indo-Chinese peninsula. What 

 then becomes of the Malay as a primary division of 

 mankind? As such it can no longer be recognised m 

 anthropology, and must sink to the position of a mere 

 variety of the Mongol type. The so-called true Malay 

 or typical Malay is essentially a Mongolian, and the like- 

 ness between the two has not failed to strike all careful 

 observers. " The Malayan race," says Wallace, " as a 

 whole undoubtedly very closely resembles the East Asian 

 populations from Siam to Manchuria. I was much struck 

 with this, when in the Island of Bali I saw Chinese 

 traders, who had adopted the costume of that country, 

 and who could then hardly be distinguished from Malays; 

 and on the other hand I have seen natives of Java who, 

 as far as physiognomy was concerned, would pass very 

 well for Chinese." Hence De ()uatrefages rightly rejects 

 the claim of the Malays to be regarded as a tundamental 

 type. " All polygenists," he remarks, " have regarded 

 the Malays as one of \.\\t\r Jtuniair spfcus ; many mono- 

 genists have considered them as one of the principal 

 races. I showed long ago that in reality they are only a 

 mixed race in which white, black, and yellow elements 

 are associated." 



The last clause of this sentence gives the true solution 

 of the problem. The inhabitants of Malaysia consist 

 not of one, nor even of three distinct races, but of three 

 races variously interming ed, the yellow or Mongolian, 

 and the white or Caucasian chiefly in the west, these two 

 and the black or Papuan chiefly in the east. As the 

 fusion of yellow, white, and black produces the so-called 

 " Alfuros " in the east, so the fusion of yellow and white 

 produces the so-called Malays in the west. The more 

 the yellow prevails the near.r do the Malays approach 

 the Mongol type ; the more the white prevails the nearer 

 do they approach the Caucasian type, until in some 

 places they seem to be no longer distinguishable from 

 the Mongols, in others from the Caucasians. The 

 Javanese are taken for Chinese by Wallace, just as the 

 Mentawey Islanders are taken for Sawaiori or Eastern 

 Polynesians by von Rosenberg. Under these circum- 

 stances it is not surprising that those who seek for unity 

 in the Archipelago should meet with nothing but confusion. 

 Prof. Flower comments on the divergent characteristics 

 presented by the Malayan crania, remarking that " there 

 is certainly no very great conformity in the characters of 

 the skulls in our collections which are said to belong to 

 Malays." This must always be the case until we come 

 to an understanding as to the meaning of the term Malay, 

 which after all is far more a national and linguistic than 

 a racial expression. Proceeding on the groundless 

 assumption of a common Malay type in Oceanica, 

 Welcker arrived at the subjoined astonishing results 

 from cranial measurements in Micronesia and Malaysia 

 alone : — 



Length of Skull 100 



Index of Index of Difference, 



breadth. height. 



Caroline Islanders ... 68 ... 74 ■•• + " 



"Alfuros" 74 •■• 79 ■•■ +5 



Dyaks of Borneo ... 75 ... 77 ■■• +2 



Balinese 76 -• 77 •■■ + ' 



Ambiiyne.^e 77 ■■• 77 •■• + °'4 



Sumatran 77 •■• 7^ ••• + ' 



Macassar 78 ... 78 ... - 0-5 



Javanese 79 ■•• 80 ... -f 0-4 



Buginese 79 ••• ^° ■•• ■*" °''* 



Menadorese 80 ... 81 ... + i 



Madurese 82 ... 82 ... - o'l 



Yet even here Sumatran is taken as a unit, although it is 

 not hazarding too much to say that a comparison of 

 Atyeh, Batta, Palambang, Janebi, Siak, Menangkabu, 

 Korinchi, Rejang, Lampung, and other crania from that 

 island alone would probably yield almost as many dis- 



crepancies as are revealed in this table. There is in fact 

 less uniformity of type in Malaysia alone, with a popula- 

 tion of some 25,000,000, than in the whole of China and 

 Mon<'olia with a probable population of 400,000,000. 

 ^ A. H. Keane 



{To be continued.) 



A CHAPTER. IN THE HISTORY OF THE 



CONIFERS 



II. 



Ginkgo (Linnaius) 



THE perhaps better known name of this genus is 

 Salisburia (Smith), but the Linna^an name, adapted 

 from the Chinese, has unfortunately priority. 1 he genus 

 contains only one existing species, the gigantic (;w;;/C:fj^ 

 biloba of N orthern China and Japan. It is classified witb 

 the Taxea:, is dicecious, and the flabelliform leaves are 

 deciduous, leathery, very variably lobed, and of all sizes 

 up to an extreme of five inches across. The fruit, about 

 an inch in diameter, is drupaceous, on a slender foot- 

 stalk, composed externally of a fleshy layer, and internally 

 of a hard light-coloured shell, and is somewhat unsym- 

 metrical, owing to the abortion of one of the seeds. 1 he 

 foliage is like that of the maidenhair fern, but the petiole 

 is stout, often three inches long, and distinctly articulated 

 at the base. An important characteristic in recognising 

 the fossil leaf, besides the petiole, is that however irregu- 

 larly they may be lobed, they are almost invariably 

 primarily bilobed. 



Though so restricted a genus now, its ancestry is 

 perhaps more venerable than that of any other forest 

 tree The Carboniferous fruits Trigonocarpus and Noeg- 

 eerathia are believed by both Hooker and S a porta to have 

 belonged to some ancestral form, and even the foliage of 

 the latter, Psygmophyllum of Schimper, approaches nearly 

 to that of Ginkgo. Baieria, beyond doubt a close ally, 

 appears in the Permian, and Ginkgo in all probability m 

 the bilobate Jeanpaulia of the Rhcetic of Bayreuth, but 

 the erouo did not reach its maximum until the J urassics. 

 A few species have been described in other works but 

 Heer's Jurassic flora of Eastern Siberia (" Flora foss. 

 Arctica" vol. iv.) contains by far the most important 

 contribution to their past history. Five genera are 

 placed in the groups: Phccnicopsis Uinkgo, Bauna 

 Trklwpitys, and Czckano.vskia,\,^xX. there is no special 

 characfer' uniting the latter to Cnkgo, although it 1. no 

 doubt coniferous. The remains are clusters of occasion- 

 allv forked acicular leaves, sheathing at the base m 

 imbricated scales. The leaves widen in most specimens 

 here and there into bead- like expansions, inferred to 

 have been caused by some extinct type of parasitic 

 fun-us It is thought by Heer that a detached stem 

 beanng shortly petiolated double seeds or nuts inay be 

 their fruit. Phoenicopsis is a cluster of separate leaves, 

 also sheathing in scales at the base, but forming a fine 

 palm hke folia°ge, thought by Heer to unite Cordaites and 

 Baieria, yet without any direct affinity with Ginkgo. 



ThTmost aberrant of the genera obviously belong ng 

 to the -roup is Trichopitys of Saporta In this the 

 eaves were smaller, with fewer veins, and the P-'-enchyma 

 reduced to a narrow expansion margining each yem. 

 AltSougb so extreme a modil^cation of the normal type, 

 Tsdacea^ possesses the characteristic bilobation and 

 petiole Its affinity is best traced through G. r.««//««, 

 which is similar, but with the segments of the leaves 

 expanded to receive two to three veins each 



G sihirua and G. hpida are separated on trivial 

 -rounds not supported by the illustrations, and when 

 Suited furnish the chief and most abundant leaves in he 

 deoosit These are nearly as large as in the existing 

 Scies; but more digitate, and with about five veins to 



' T. puMhi probably, belongs _to some other division of the vegetable 

 kingdom. 



