Mr Cull on the recent Progress of Ethnology. 21 



Ethnological inquiry ; and should the dynastic struggle which 

 is now going on in China be finally settled by British arms 

 or diplomacy, we may hope for the opportunity of studying 

 more perfectly the Ethnology of that vast empire. Trans- 

 Gangetic India and the Chinese empire may be considered as 

 one extensive Ethnological area, the languages of which are 

 monosyllabic and the religion Buddhism. 



Mr Oldham, Geologist to the Indian Survey, has been 

 studying the hill-tribes north of Sylhet ; and a valuable com- 

 munication was read to our Society on the subject on the first 

 night of the session. We may expect further knowledge of 

 these various tribes from him, as he has gone to that locality 

 a second time with specific objects of inquiry. He says : " I 

 am satisfied the language is monosyllabic : and I think the 

 Garo tribe is more nearly allied to the Kassias, Kukis, Ka- 

 chari, and Munipari, than with the Bodo or Dhimal." He 

 is now studying the mutual relationship of these hill-tribes. 



Mr Logan, another of our Fellows, continues his scientific 

 researches in the Indian Archipelago. He and his band of 

 contributors record the result of their investigations in the 

 Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. Re- 

 siding in that distant part of the world, they devote their 

 energies to the study of its nature. Mr Logan's contribu- 

 tions to its Ethnology are of the highest character. His 

 papers on the languages of the Indo-Pacific islands place him 

 in the foremest rank of ethnological philologists, and give us 

 more precise ideas of the migrations which led to populating 

 those islands. 



Mr Logan is animated by an intense desire of knowledge, 

 with an untiring zeal in its pursuit, and aims at the high ob- 

 ject of exhausting his subject. In a letter which I lately re- 

 ceived from him, speaking of the Polynesian languages, he 

 says : " I think you will find that I have pretty well exhaust- 

 ed our present linguistic data in my forthcoming chapters, 

 and thrown new light on the Polynesians, but we require 

 more facts for Micronesia and Papuanesia, before we can go 

 further. In my next chapters I take each geographical 

 group separately (e.g. Sumatra and its islets, Java and its 

 islets, Borneo and its islets, and so on to Polynesia)." .... 



