I might here comment on the singular fact that the Andaman Islands are situated near the Nicobars in the Indian Ocean, but that the populations on both sides of them are entirely different.  In my own detailed descriptions which treat of the skulls and the hair specially, it is affirmed that the typical skull shape of the Nicobarese is dolichocephalic and that “their hair stands between the straight hair of the Mongoloid and the sleek, though slightly curved or wavy, hair of the Malayan and Indian peoples;” their skin color is relatively dark, but only so much so as is peculiar to the tribes of India.  With the little blacks of the Andamans there is not the slightest agreement.  In this we have one of the best evidences against the theory of Waitz-Gerland that the differences in physical appearance are to be attributed to variation merely.  I will, however, so as not to be misunderstood, expressly emphasize that I am not willing to declare that the two peoples have been at all times so constituted; I am now speaking of actual conditions.

In the same sense I wish also my remarks concerning the Negritos to be taken.  Not one fact is in evidence from which we may conclude that a single neighboring people known to us has been Negritized.  We are therefore justified when we see in the Negritos a truly primitive people.  As they are now, they were more than three hundred and fifty years ago when the first European navigators visited these islands.  About older relationships nothing is known.  All the graves from which the bones of Negritos now in possession were taken belong to recent times, and also the oldest descriptions which have been received, so far as phylogeny is concerned, must be characterized as modern.

[Negritos a primitive people.] The little change in the mode of life made known through these descriptions in connection with the low grade of culture on which these impoverished tribes live amply testify that we have before us here a primitive race.

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(The question whether we have to do with older, independent races in the Malay Archipelago or with mixtures is everywhere an open one.—­Translator.)

Whoever would picture the present ethnic affiliations of the light-colored peoples of the Philippines will soon land in confusion on account of the great number of tribes.  One of the ablest observers, Ferd.  Blumentritt, mentions, besides the Negritos, the Chinese and the whites, not less than 51 such tribes.  He classifies them in one group as Malays, according to the plan now customary.  The division rests primarily on a linguistic foundation.  But when it is noted that the identity of language among all the tribes is not established and among many not at all proved, it is sufficiently shown that speech is a character of little constancy, and that a language may be imposed upon a people to the annihilation of their own by those who belong to a different linguistic stock.  The Malay Sea is filled with islands on which tarry the remnants of peoples not Malay.