246 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



cubic nches ; a diversity in itself sufficient to demonstrate the 

 mixed nature of their origin. The dome is high and rounded, 

 with a low forehead ; the face is flat and broad ; the nose 

 short, expanded at the wings ; the mouth wide, with projecting 

 upper jaws, and teeth resembling Negroes; the skin varying 

 in color from clear brown to dark clove ; the auditory aperture 

 elevated, and consequently with a depressed forehead, — nearly 

 as much so as in the woolly-haired type, but commonly distin- 

 guished by prominent ridges of the orbits overhanging the eyes ; 

 and we have seen a light brown, so-called, Papua girl, from one 

 of the South Sea cannibal islands,* whose forehead had the 

 lengthened form assumed to be peculiar to the American races. 

 In the more typical tribes, the Malay's hair is coarse, lank and 

 shining, like the Chinese ; more aberrant, it becomes undulat- 

 ing and bushy, till, in still more adulterated races, it rises in the 

 high curly mops which attest the intermixture of blood to be 

 not less than half with woolly-haired families. This condition, 

 however, most frequently advances the physical improvement 

 of the possessors, and even the intellectual, when there is an 

 additional innervation from a Caucasian source. The beard is 

 often plucked out, generally scanty in the purer hybridism of 

 the Malay composition, nor does it increase to the full honors 

 of a well furnished fringe, up to the ears, unless there are again 

 other indications of a Caucasian infusion. In that case, consid- 

 erable stature is likewise not unfrequent; while, without the 

 exciting cause just mentioned, a lank spare structure is the 

 more usual, and the lower extremities are often somewhat defi- 

 cient and short among the tribes addicted to marine lives. In 

 moral capacity, the Malay races are inferior to the Mongolic, 

 yet they exhibit, like them, intellectual vitality, great bodily 

 activity, and considerable manual dexterity, as well as enterprise. 

 The temperament of true Malays is treacherous, the disposi- 

 tion ferocious, implacable, and the nervous system compatible 

 with a kind of insensibility to bodily pain ; hence, fits of 



* Fr n Tikienitri, a sandal wood island. 



