1900.] Annual Address, 47 



Study of Ethnology in India ' in the Journal of the Anthropological 

 Institute, vol. xx, p. 235, in the following year. The conclusions 

 then stated were accepted by Sir William Flower in his address as 

 President of the British Association at Oxford ; and were contirmed 

 by the elaborate analyses of the figures subsequently published by 

 Professor Topinard and Dr. Beddoe. They were, however, of a very 

 general cliaracter and no attempt was made to press them into detail or 

 to make them the basis of a minute classification of the various castes 

 according to their supposed racial affinities. For this there were two 

 reasons. In the first place some of the measurements, though intro- 

 duced with the approval of Professors Flower and Topinard were 

 admittedly experimental and it seemed desirable to await the judgment 

 of experts before proceeding to generalise from the results ; and secondly, 

 it was doubtful whether a large series extending over a wider area 

 might not introduce data pointing to quite different conclusions. A 

 Provincial boundar}' is after all merely an arbitrary limit and it may 

 well happen that the real clue to the origin of a tribe is only to be found 

 by following it beyond the border of another Province. The great Kochh 

 tribe is a case in point. Looking at them from the Bengal side one is 

 inclined to say that on the whole Dravidian characteristics predominate 

 over Mongolian, but in Assam the converse seems to hold good and it 

 becomes obvious that a larger series and a wider view is necessary to 

 settle the point. In connexion with this tribe my friend Major Prain 

 has jjiven me some interesting information which brings his researches 

 in economic botany into relation with ethnology and supports the view 

 that tiie Kochh are of Indo-Chinese rather than Dravidian origin. It 

 seems that the northern districts of Bengal, Rungpur, Bogra, Dinajpur, 

 Purnea, — the country north of the great Ganges and east of the Kosi — 

 are marked by the cultivation of a considerable number of crops, 

 particularly cold weather ones, which are peculiar to themselves or at 

 any rate which do not extend further south or further west into either 

 the lower or the upper Grangetic plain. 



The commonest field Sag in the whole of this area is what the 

 people term Lapha, which is a Mallow {Malva rerticillata). This is 

 hardly met with anywhere else in India. A very common garden Sag 

 is the Lahi Sag, a cabbage mustard (Brassica amcifolia ) also grown 

 largely in the Assam valley but not elsewhere grown in India. 



A widely cultivated oil-seed is a Chrysanthemum, ( C. coronarium) 

 commonly cultivated in Assam and in Burma but hardly if at all 

 cultivated elsewhere in India. 



The plant which the people grow for its fibre and use almost 

 exclusively for making fishing nets and. ropes for dragging their boats 



