REPORT FROM THE BALLOON COMMITTEE. 249 



the inventive faculties no further. At best they may have availed themselves 

 of the wrecks during the last century or two of their insular existence, to 

 barb their arrows with iron instead of fish-bone, and to get from broken 

 bottles such trenchant fragments as our oldest-known Europeans obtained 

 from broken flints. The animal appetites are gratified in the simplest 

 animal fashion ; there is no sense of nakedness, no sentiment of shame. 

 The man, choosing promiscuously for one or more years after puberty, then 

 takes, or has assigned to him, a female who becomes his exclusive mate and 

 servant ; and the reason assigned for this monogamy is that she may be 

 restricted, while he may continue to select from the unmarried females as 

 before. The climate dispenses with the necessity of any other protection of 

 the body than a paste of earth and oil. Any rudiment of a cincture relates 

 solely to the convenience of the suspension of weapons or other portable 

 objects. They are not cannibals. Implacably hostile to strangers, the 

 Andamaners have made no advance in the few centuries during which their 

 seas have been traversed by ships of higher races. Perhaps the sole change 

 is that of the materials for weapons derived from casual wrecks, to which 

 allusion has already been made. 



Enjoying, therefore, the merest animal life during those centuries, why 

 may they not have so existed for thousands of years .'' I'he conditions of 

 existence being such as they now enjoy, on what can the ethnologist found 

 an idea of the limitation of the period during which the successive genera- 

 tions of Andamaners have continued so to exist ? Antecedent generations of 

 the race may have coexisted with the slow and gradual geological changes 

 which have obliterated the place or continent of their primitive origin, what- 

 ever be the hypothesis adopted regarding it. 



In every essential of human physical character, however, the present Min- 

 copies or Andamaners participate with their more intellectually gifted 

 brethren. The size of the brain, indicated by the cranial chamber, promises 

 aptitude for civilization. The Andamaners resemble the orangs and chim- 

 panzeee only in their diminutive stature ; but this is associated with the well- 

 balanced human proportions of trunk to limbs : they are, indeed, surpassed 

 by the great orangs and gorillas in the size of the trunk and in the length 

 and strength of the arms, in a greater degree than are the more advanced 

 and taller races of mankind. 



PLATE VI. 



Side view of the skull of the male native of the Andamans : natural size. 



PLATE VIL 

 Fi"^ 1 Front view 1 

 Fie" 2 Base view < °^ *^^ same skull, on the scale of i an inch to an inch. 



Fig. 3. Bony palate and grinding surface of the teeth of the same skull: natural size. 



Report from the Balloon Committee. By Colonel Syk^s,M.P.,F.R.S. 



Professor Walker, after the appointment of the Committee at the Aberdeen 

 Meeting, having communicated to Colonel S\ kes his inability to undertake 

 anj- active labours with respect to carrying out the objects for which the 

 Committee was nominated, Colonel Sykes put himself into correspondence 

 with Mr. Langley, a gentleman of Newcastle, who offered to construct a 

 suitable balloon, provided an advance of money were made to him. The cor- 

 respondence however was without result, and Colonel Sykes in consequence 

 thought it unnecessary to invite the opinions of the other members of the 

 Committee with respect to the objects to be sought for in balloon-ascents, 



