LANGUAGES AND HACKS. 227 
eign animals.”* There is nothing like such evidence, historical or 
philological, in the languages of the Pacific. 
I shall conclude with a brief recapitulation of the results at which 
I have arrived in this essay. 
The races of men referred to in the inquiry do not consist, as 
commonly supposed, of one brown-eomplexioned, and one negro 
■ ■ -e, ’ of cveral of both. 
The inhabitants of Madagascar are Africans, and wholly distinct 
f**om all the inhabitants of the Malay Archipelago or Pacific. 
There are many languages essentially distinct from each other, 
both of the brown-eomplexioned and negro races, and not one only 
of each of these two, as generally supposed. 
Except in the case of the Malay in the Archipelago, and the Poly¬ 
nesian in the Pacific, there are no wide-spread languages or dialects. 
As far as our scanty knowledge of the Negro languages will ena¬ 
ble us to judge, the only clear distinction between them and those of 
the brown-eomplexioned consists in the first containing always more 
consonants in proportion to vowels, and more harsh combinations of 
consonants than the latter. 
It is chiefly the Malay and Javanese, the languages of the two 
most powerful, civilized, and enterprizing nations of the Archipela¬ 
go, which is found in other tongues, from Madagascar to Easter Is¬ 
land, and from Formosa to New Zealand. 
The evidence for this exists in the words themselves, and their 
being pure and numerous as we are near Sumatra and Java, the ori¬ 
ginal countries of the Malay and Javanese nations, and corrupt and 
unfrequent as we recede from them, until the barrier becoming in¬ 
superable, they disappear altogether. 
The superior civilization of the people of the countries of the Asi¬ 
de continent has excluded Malayan and Javanese from their langu¬ 
age—a grovelling condition of society has excluded them from those 
of the tribes of Australia, and insuperable physical obstacles from 
those of America. 
’ Freycinet, voyage autour du mondc; Wilson’s Account of the Pclew 
Islands. 
