178 The Glassificatory System of 



researches, and more especially since we find the peculiarities 

 of one tribe reproduced with startling fidelity in another 

 tribe far distant from it, we are, as it seems to me, irresistibly 

 impelled to the conclusion that there must have been a time 

 when all these widely separated nations belonged to one race 

 and were inhabitants of the same land, and every fresh 

 discovery made by our researches proclaims ever more clearly 

 that " God hath made of one blood all nations of men to 

 dwell on all the face of the earth." 



Our discoveries are pointing more and more emphatically 

 in the direction wherein many other lines of evidence have 

 long been converging, viz., to Asia, as the fatherland and 

 starting place of all these tribes. 



As far as I am aware, no Asiatic nation has been found 

 having the terms of kinship which reveal the Malay system. 

 It is quite possible that this system may yet be discovered 

 amoncr the mountain tribes ; but hitherto the least advanced 

 in civilization of all the Asiatic families, are found to 

 have reached the Turanian sj^stem. But the Malay system 

 appears in very many Polynesian tribes ; whence we may 

 infer that, supposing Asia to be the starting place, the great 

 Malayan emigration took place before the introduction of 

 the tribal organization into Asia, resulting in the advance to 

 the Turanian system. We need not be surprised at the 

 Malayan system being found among Polynesian races, 

 although it has altogether disappeared from the land whence 

 they came ; for insular life is always more stationary than is 

 continental, because it is less exposed to external impulse — 

 of course I speak of insular life as it is found among the 

 Pacific Islands. Moreover, since we find Turanjp,n character- 

 istics among theFijiansandthe Tongans,and taking for granted 

 that the first emigrants from Asia brought the Malay system 

 with them, we must infer either that, at the time of their 

 emigTation, both the Malayan system and the Turanian pre- 

 vailed in Asia, and that some of the emigrants had one 

 system and some the other ; or, that there must have been 

 two successive waves of emigration separated by an interval 

 wide enough to allow of the development of the Turanian 

 system in Asia before the second wave left its shores. The 

 latter theory seems to me the more probable of the two, and 

 I have found curious confirmation of it in the glimpses I 

 have been able to get of the kinship system prevailing 

 among the heathen mountaineers of Navitilevu, the largest 

 island in the Fiji group. Long before my attention was 



