British Association. 301 
erade of humanity, with the dwarfish stature and black colour of the An- 
damanners, had always made a further knowledge of their physical cha- 
racters peculiarly desirable. He (Professor Owen) was enabled to con- 
tribute the present notice of their osteological and dental characters by 
the opportunity kindly afforded him by Dr Frederick J. Mouatt, inspector 
of Indian gaols, who had brought over the bones of an adult male native 
of the Andamans, and had now presented them to the British Museum. 
The bones presented a compact sound texture, with the processes, &c., 
well defined. The cranium was well formed. The teeth equalled in size 
those of Indo-Europeans. After minutely describing the whole of the 
bones, Professor Owen remarked that the dimensions of parts of the skele- 
ton indicated that they were from an individual four feet ten inches in 
height. The Andamans or Mincopie were called by most of the observers 
who had described them “ negrillos” or dwarf negroes. They had no 
knowledge, and appeared to have no idea, of their own origin. It had 
been surmised that they might be the descendants of African negroes im- 
ported by the Portuguese for slave labour, in their settlements at Pegu, 
and who had been wrecked on the Andamans. But the recorders of this 
hypothesis alluded to it asa mere hearsay. Neither the skull nor the 
teeth of the male Andaman above described offered any of the characters 
held to be distinctive of the African negroes. The cranium had not the 
relative narrowness ascribed to that of the negro. It presented nothing 
suggestive of lateral compression. It conformed to the full oval type, 
with a slight degree of prognatheism; and was altogether on a smaller 
scale than in the Indo-Europeans exhibiting that form of skull. It is to 
be presumed that the Portuguese would import from the Guinea Coast or 
other mart of negro slaves, individuals of the usual stature; and it was. 
incredible that their descendants, enjoying freedom in a tropical loca- 
lity affording such a sufficiency and even abundance of food as the Anda- 
mans were testified to supply, should have degenerated in stature in the 
course of two or three centuries to the characteristic dwarfishness of the 
otherwise well-made, well-nourished, strong, and active natives of the 
Andaman islands. He concluded, therefore, that they were aborigines, 
and merely resembled negroes in the blackness of the tegumentary pig- 
ment, which might be due to constant exposure in such a nude and pri. 
mitive race. The observation of the hair of the scalp, though perhaps 
unsatisfactory with respect to a race which habitually shaved or eradi- 
eated the hair, were it exact in regard to the crisp, curly, or woolly cha-. 
racter of the hair, would show a resemblance of the Andamanners to the 
Papuans and Australians, as well as to the African negroes. But the 
skull and dentition of the Andaman male was still more distinct from the 
Papuan-Australian type than from. that of the west coast negro. From. 
the present opportunity of studying the osteology and dentition of the 
Andamanner, the ethnologist derived as little indication or ground of 
surmise of the origin of the race in question from an Australasian as from 
an African continent ; and there was scarcely better evidence of his Ma- 
layan or Mongolian ancestors. He was not cognisant of any anatomical 
grounds for deriving the Andaman people from any existing continent, . 
He intended to give no encouragement, however, to a belief that they 
originated in the locality to which they were now limited. Dr Latham 
stated that their language showed them to belong to the same division 
with the Burmese of the opposite continent. ‘These, however, showed the 
average stature of the Southern Asiatic men ; and it would be as pure an 
assumption to affirm that they had been derived from the Andamanners 
as that these were degenerate descendants of the Burmese. The cardinal 
defect of speculators on the origin of the human species was the assump- 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. XIV. NO. I,—ocT, 1861. 2e 
