APPENDIX. 459 



to the origin of the races now inhabiting that country, but also in 

 relation to those of other countries existing in similar circum- 

 stances, and with the peculiarities and affinities of whose lan- 

 guages the pioneers of religion and civilisation are daily in- 

 creasing our acquaintance, and thus adding new evidences of the 

 unity of the human race. 



In contemplating the peculiarities of the Malagasy language, it 

 seems scarcely possible to avoid associating ethnological with 

 philological inquiries, and we feel impelled to ask whether the 

 races by which this language is now spoken have been derived 

 from a parent race, possessing at the period of their separation, 

 whenever such separation may have taken place, a high degree of 

 civilisation ; and whether they have passed along a gradually 

 descending scale until they have reached the depressed level at 

 which indubitable traces of that parent language are still found ? 

 And further, we are inclined to ask, is the language of a people, 

 Avhen highly cultivated, retained, by scattered portions of that 

 people, long after other elements of the civilisation of the parent 

 race have ceased amongst its widely separated descendants ? It 

 seems scarcely possible that the natives of Madagascar, certainly 

 not the lowest of the races among whose language a large infusion 

 of their own is to be found, should have been derived from a 

 people in a lower grade of civilisation than themselves. A lower 

 civilisation would not have required, and could scarcely have ad- 

 mitted, the use of a language of such precision of structure and 

 harmony of combination as that of Madagascar exhibits. Internal 

 evidence would thus seem to favour the opinion that the Mala- 

 gasy was derived from a language rich, flexible, and exact, which 

 must have belonged to a civilised people, whose intellectual cul- 

 ture it reflected. Such opinion seems to have been entertained 

 by Raffles, Humboldt, Leyden, Crawford, and others, who have 

 directed their inquiries to the migrations of the races by whom 

 this language is used. Baron Humboldt, brother of the celebrated 

 traveller, thus expresses his opinion on this subject : — " There is 

 no doubt that the Malagasy belongs to the family of the Malayan 

 languages, and bears the greatest affinity to the languages spoken 

 in Java, Sumatra, and the Avhole Indian Archipelago. But it 



