APPENDIX. 
465 
have produced any change in the language as used by the people 
themselves; and the language of Madagascar appears to retain 
at the present time all the distinctive qualities by which it was 
characterised when brought by the first settlers to the country, 
excepting so far as it may have been modified by themselves. 
The few new words which foreign objects have rendered neces¬ 
sary have been so altered, in order to adapt them to native use, 
as to leave but little resemblance to their original forms. 
This language exhibits a singular instance, paradoxical as it 
may appear, of a people in a comparatively low grade of civilisa¬ 
tion, possessing and using a language copious, precise, and in 
some respects highly philosophical. And this circumstance natu¬ 
rally suggests deeply interesting inquiries, not only in reference 
to the origin of the races now inhabiting that country, but also in 
relation to those of other countries existing in similar circum¬ 
stances, and with the peculiarities and affinities of whose lan¬ 
guages the pioneers of religion and civilisation are daily in¬ 
creasing our acquaintance, and thus adding new evidences of the 
unity of the human race. 
In contemplating the peculiarities of the Malagasy language, it 
seems scarcely possible to avoid associating ethnological with 
philological inquiries, and we feel impelled to ask whether the 
races by which this language is now spoken have been derived 
from a parent race, possessing at the period of their separation, 
whenever such separation may have taken place, a high degree of 
civilisation; and whether they have passed along a gradually 
descending scale until they have reached the depressed level at 
which indubitable traces of that parent language are still found ? 
And further, we are inclined to ask, is the language of a people, 
when highly cultivated, retained, by scattered portions of that 
people, long after other elements of the civilisation of the parent 
race have ceased amongst its widely separated descendants ? It 
seems scarcely possible that the natives of Madagascar, certainly 
not the lowest of the races among whose language a large infusion 
of their own is to be found, should have been derived from a 
people in a lower grade of civilisation than themselves. A lower 
civilisation would not have required, and could scarcely have ad- 
II H 
