34 Annual Address. [Feb. 



It is a matter for congratulation that an area which promises to 

 prove exceptioually rich in all kinds of survivals should liave been 

 taken in hand by such competent inquirers as Messrs. Holland and 

 Thurston. To their names I may add that of Mr. MuUaly, now 

 Assistant Inspector- General of Police in Madras, whose researches 

 among the criminal tribes of the Presidency are well-known and have 

 an iuterest far be} ond the limits of his Department. 



An equally interesting and even less-known area on the north-east 

 frontier, the valley of the Brahmaputra and the adjacent ranges of hills, 

 has been taken in hand by our Anthropological Secretary, Major 

 Waddell, ^\ho is specially qualified for the task by his anthropometric 

 researches among tlie Himalayan tribes of Sikkim, Eastern Nepal, and 

 British Bhutan, the Kochh of Northern Bengal, Tibetans from all parts 

 of Tibet, including the valley of the Tsangpo, the Upper Brahmaputra, 

 and also most of the tribes of Burma as far ujj as the Kachins or 

 fSingphos above Bhamo on the confines of China and Assam. Major 

 Waddell's observations, which will be published in an early number of 

 the Journal of the Society, will furnish exact details of the physical 

 type of the tribes of Assam and the Brahmaputra Valley and will 

 include a record of the colour of the skin and eyes —the first attempt 

 of the kind in India. The opening paragraphs of his paper, which he 

 has kindly permitted me to quote, describe the almost untouched field 

 which his researches will open up : — 



" Few of the wilder parts of the world, still left., preserve such a 

 vast variety of savage tribes of such great ethnological interest as the 

 mountainous valley of the mighty Brahmaputra, in its course from 

 Lower Tibet to the Bay of Bengal. And in few localities has the war 

 of races raged more fiercely. 



" This hilly region, standing up between China, India, Tibet, and 

 Burma, has come to be the last refuge of scattered families of the more 

 primitive hordes from each of those countries. Driven into these wild 

 glens, by the advance of civilization up the pliiins and lower valleys, 

 they have been hemmed in among the mountains, where, pressing on 

 each other in their struggle for existence, they have developed into 

 innumerable isolated tribes, differing widely in appearance, customs and 

 language ; but all alike engaged in blood-thirsty feuds, head-hunting, 

 and murderous raids on their more defenceless neighbours. Many of 

 them are of that extremely barbarous type which is popularly associated 

 with South Africa. Almost equally painful, too, was the condition of 

 the rich plain fringing the great river — the plain of Assam whose history 



i Journ., Authrop. lust., Vol. xx. (ISyi), p. a-ll. 



