52 



Observations on the 



[No. 37, 



quiry I take occasion to state that, for many years, I had felt alike 

 curious and embarrassed by reason of relations observed by me be- 

 tween some classes of southern Islanders and the Tamil population, 

 least mingled with the Hindu race. I derived this observation from 

 Cook's third voyage; from various Missionary accounts relative to 

 New Zealand ; and more recently, with stronger conviction, from a 

 partial perusal of the volumes relating to the United States exploring 

 expedition in the south seas, under Captain Wilkes. All the simili- 

 tudes that I have noted in language, manners, customs, form of body, 

 physiognomical expression of features, and construction of utensils, 

 cannot be purely incidental : there must be a relative connexion, as 

 I believe ; and as I also suppose as yet not even surmised by any 

 one but myself. I certainly still look at the matter with surprise al- 

 most amounting to incredulity : I would not announce it as otherwise 

 than a conjecture ; until a careful collation of the apparent evidences 

 shall enable me to state formally that I fully believe the matter to be 

 so. But I may add that my geological inquiries have led me to con- 

 clusions widely divergent from the generally received state of that 

 science in Europe, in some important particulars ; and those conclu- 

 sions are quite in accordance with the conjecture of a spread of south- 

 ern races over the boundary of that hemisphere northerly ; while they 

 would make such spread of a southern race, or of more than one, an- 

 tecedent even to the possibility of an emigration from the north to 

 southern India. The evidences on which I base those ethnological 

 conclusions is not yet before the public. To guard against mistake 

 I remark that, in the philological branch of inference, I do not refer 

 to the Paumotu, or Tahitian group of islands ; these islanders have 

 a vowel-language unlike any other one that I know of ; but the ana- 

 logies above referred to, are traceable, as I conceive, in New Zea- 

 land, in the Samoan group, and in the Tonga islands *they extend al- 

 so over the line to the Hawaian group ; marking an analogy of pro- 

 gress, between the north pacific, and the Indian ocean north of the 

 equator. 



However I view these scattered inferences with so much of hesita- 

 tion that, in so far as philology is concerned, I would not do more 

 than hint at possible verities. It would be needful, before I could 

 be positive, for me to collect all the scattered analogies by careful ex- 

 tracts, and analysis ; and then to compare the results at which they 



