The sequestered tribes of Southern India in some cases approximate to the more. Turanian African type, in which the nose is flatter, the beard scanty, and the person shorter. There is so considerable a difference between this type and the more Semitic, .that, whatever may be the original relationship of the two, it is necessary to recognise b6th as existing in India at the earliest era which ethnology can descry. A similar phenomenon presents itself on the western side of the Indian Ocean, and, what is still more import ant with reference to India, it is found also in the Negro population of the eastern side. Many of the East African tribes are very short and slender, small-eyed, flat-faced, and beardless, while others are middle-sized and even tall and robust, with the Semitico-African beards, aquiline or pyramidal noses, raised Hares, and large eyes of the other archaic types of Southern India. Both types preserve a black complexion, alike in Africa, India, the Andamans, the Malay Peninsula, the Malayo-Polynesian Islands, and Australia, al though modifications of colour also occur through out this area. Mr. Logan thinks that little weight is to be attached to the present absence of spiral hair in S. India, for some of the spiral-haired Papuan tribes of New Guinea and Torres Straits are often more Africo-Semitic and S. Indian in their physiognomy, than the Australians, while the latter have the fine hair of S. Indians and some Mid African nations, and a linguistic formation which resembles the S. Indian more than any in the world.
In Further India, in the extreme S.E. of Asia, are two marked types of the human These are the lank-haired Malay and brown races, and the curly-haired races to whom the terms Negro, Negrito, Papuan, Alfura, etc., have been applied. The Ultra-Indian races in their funda mental characters, physical and mental, and in all their social and national developments, from the lowest or most barbarous stage in which any of their tribes now exist, to the highest civilisa tion which they have attained in Burma, Pegu, Siam, and Cambodia, are intimately connected with the predominant Oceanic races. The tribes of the Niha Polynesian family, who appear to have preceded those of the Malayan, resemble the finer type of the Mon, Burman, and the allied Indian and Himalayan tribes. The Malayan family, according to Mr. Logan, approximates closely to the ruder or more purely Mongolian type of Ultra-India, and the identity in person and character is accompanied by a close agree ment in habits, customs, institutions, and arts, so as to place beyond doubt that the lank-haired populations of the islands have been received from the Gangetic and Ultra-Indian races. The influx of this population closed tho long era of Papuan predominance, and gave rise to the new or modified forms of language which now prevail.
Tho opinions of other eminent writers merit notice. In the Archipelago, there seemed to Mr. Crawford to be four races of man, the Malays proper, the Semang or dwarf Negro of the Malay Peninsula, the Negrito or Acta of the Philippines, the larger Negro race or Papua. of New Guinea, and a race whom Crawford styles the Negro - Malay, intermediate between the Papuan and Malay.
Both Mr. Earl and Mr. Alfred Wallace have shown that the Archipelago is divisible into an Asiatic and an Australian portion, that the flora and fauna differ, and that all the peoples of the various islands can be grouped either with the Malay or the Papuan, two radically distinct races, who differ in every physical, mental, and moral character ; and Mr. Wallace states his be lief that under these two forms, as types, the whole of the peoples of the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia can be classed. He considers that a line can be drawn which shall so divide the islands as to indicate the one-half which truly belongs to Asia, while the other no less certainly is allied to Australia ; and he designates these respectively the Indo-Malayan and the Austro Malayan divisions. Mr. Wallace gives to Mr. Earl the credit of having been the first to indicate the division of the Archipelago into an Australian and Asiatic region. All the wide expanse of sea which divides Java, Sumatra, and Borneo from each other, and from Malacca and Siam, rarely exceeds 40 fathoms in depth, and the seas north to the Philippine Islands and Bali, east of Java, are not 100 fathoms deep ; and he is of opinion that these islands have been separated from the continent and from each other by subsidence of the intervening tracts of land. In the Judo Malayan Islands of Sumatra and Borneo are the elephant and tapir ; and the rhinoceros of Sumatra and the allied species of Java, the wild cattle of Borneo, and the species long supposed to be peculiar to Java, all inhabit some part or other of Southern Asia. Of the birds and insects, every family, and almost every genus, of the groups found in any of the islands, occur also on the Asiatic continent, and in a great number of cases the species are exactly identical. The resemblance in the natural productions of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo with those of the adjacent parts of the continent, lead to the conclusion that at a very recent geological epoch the continent of Asia ex tended far beyond its present limits in a south easterly direction, including the islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, and probably reaching as far as the present 100 fathom line of soundings. The Philippine Islands agree in some respect with Asia and the other islands,' but present some anomalies which seem to indicate that they were separated at an earlier period, and have since been subject to many revolutions in their physical geography.