Race and Dialect.—­The Nicobarese are generally classed as Malays, i.e., they are “Wild Malays,” and probably in reality an overflow of Mon tribes from the mainland of the Malay Peninsula (Census Report, p. 250).  They are a finely built race of people, but they have rendered their faces ugly by the habit of chewing betel with lime until they have destroyed their teeth by incrustations of lime, so that they cannot close their lips properly.

I think it is a mistake to class the Nicobarese as Rakshasas or demons, a term that would apply in Indian parlance more properly to the Andamanese.

The Nicobarese are all one race, including the Shom Pen, for long a mysterious tribe in the centre of Great Nicobar, but now well known.  They speak dialects of one language, though the dialects as spoken are mutually unintelligible.  There is no Negrito tribe in the Nicobars.  A detailed grammar of the language will be found in the Census Report, pp. 255-284.

The Nicobarese have long been pirates, and one of the reasons for the occupation of their islands by the Indian Government was to put down the piracy which had become dangerous to general navigation, but which now no longer exists.

P. 309.—­The great article of trade is the cocoanut, of which a detailed account will be found in the Census Report, pp. 169-174, 219-220, 243.  I would suggest the recasting of the remarks on the products of the Nicobars in your note on p. 309 in view of the statements made in those pages of the Report, bearing in mind that the details of the Nicobar Islands are now practically as well known as those relating to any other part of the East.

P. 312.—­The Nicobarese tradition is that they are descended from a man and a dog, but this is only one phase of the ordinary Far Eastern animal-descent story.

The projecting teeth mentioned by Colonel Man are common in the Nicobars in the case of adults only, usually confined to men and women advanced in life.  They are not natural, but caused, as stated above, by the excessive use of betel and lime, which forms a dark unsightly incrustation on the teeth and finally destroys them.  Children and youth of both sexes have good white normal teeth,

P. 312.

NARCONDAM.

Narcondam, an island I know well, has a separate bibliography of its own.  It belongs to the Sunda group of volcanoes, but it has been so long extinct that there are no obvious signs now of its ever having been active.  It has a species of hornbill which I have captured and shot that has differentiated itself from all others.  I do not think, therefore, it can have been recognised as a volcano by mariners in historical times, and consequently the derivation of Narakakundam is to my mind doubtful.  The obvious volcano in the neighbourhood is Barren Island, which is still alive.

ANDAMANS.