صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][merged small][subsumed]

the inventive faculties no further. At best they may have availed themselves of the wrecks during the last century or two of their insular existence, to barb their arrows with iron instead of fish-bone, and to get from broken bottles such trenchant fragments as our oldest-known Europeans obtained from broken flints. The animal appetites are gratified in the simplest animal fashion; there is no sense of nakedness, no sentiment of shame. The man, choosing promiscuously for one or more years after puberty, then takes, or has assigned to him, a female who becomes his exclusive mate and servant; and the reason assigned for this monogamy is that she may be restricted, while he may continue to select from the unmarried females as before. The climate dispenses with the necessity of any other protection of the body than a paste of earth and oil. Any rudiment of a cincture relates solely to the convenience of the suspension of weapons or other portable objects. They are not cannibals. Implacably hostile to strangers, the Andamaners have made no advance in the few centuries during which their seas have been traversed by ships of higher races. Perhaps the sole change is that of the materials for weapons derived from casual wrecks, to which allusion has already been made.

Enjoying, therefore, the merest animal life during those centuries, why may they not have so existed for thousands of years? The conditions of existence being such as they now enjoy, on what can the ethnologist found an idea of the limitation of the period during which the successive generations of Andamaners have continued so to exist? Antecedent generations of the race may have coexisted with the slow and gradual geological changes which have obliterated the place or continent of their primitive origin, whatever be the hypothesis adopted regarding it.

In every essential of human physical character, however, the present Mincopies or Andamaners participate with their more intellectually gifted brethren. The size of the brain, indicated by the cranial chamber, promises aptitude for civilization. The Andamaners resemble the orangs and chimpanzeee only in their diminutive stature; but this is associated with the wellbalanced human proportions of trunk to limbs: they are, indeed, surpassed by the great orangs and gorillas in the size of the trunk and in the length and strength of the arms, in a greater degree than are the more advanced and taller races of mankind.

PLATE VI.

Side view of the skull of the male native of the Andamans: natural size.

Fig. 1. Front view

Fig. 2. Base view

PLATE VII.

of the same skull, on the scale of an inch to an inch.

Fig. 3. Bony palate and grinding surface of the teeth of the same skull: natural size.

Report from the Balloon Committee. By Colonel SYKES, M.P., F.R.S. PROFESSOR WALKER, after the appointment of the Committee at the Aberdeen Meeting, having communicated to Colonel Sykes his inability to undertake any active labours with respect to carrying out the objects for which the Committee was nominated, Colonel Sykes put himself into correspondence with Mr. Langley, a gentleman of Newcastle, who offered to construct a suitable balloon, provided an advance of money were made to him. The correspondence however was without result, and Colonel Sykes in consequence thought it unnecessary to invite the opinions of the other members of the Committee with respect to the objects to be sought for in balloon-ascents,

« السابقةمتابعة »