These extracts have been given for the sake of throwing light upon the most remarkable Oceanic migration known—for migration there must have been, even if it were so partial as Mr. Crawfurd makes it; migration which may make the present Malagasi Oceanic or not, according to the state in which they found the island at their arrival. If it were already peopled, the passage across the great Indian Ocean is just as remarkable as if it were, till then, untrodden by a human foot. The only additional wonder in this latter case would be the contrast between the Africans who missed an island so near, and the Malays who discovered one so distant.

Individually, I differ from Mr. Crawfurd in respect to the actual differences between the Malay and the Malagasi, with the hesitation and respect due to his known acquirements in the former of these languages; but I differ more and more unhesitatingly from him in the valuation of them as signs of ethnological separation; believing, not only that the two languages are essentially of the same family, but that the descent, blood, or pedigree of the Malagasi is as Oceanic as their language.

IV. From the Cape of Good Hope to the South-western parts of Asia.—The Hottentots of the Cape have a better claim than any other members of the human kind to be considered as a separate species. Characteristics apparently differential occur on all sides. Morally, the Hottentots are rude; physically, they are undersized and weak. In all the points wherein the Eskimo differs from the Algonkin, or the Lap from the Fin, the Hottentot recedes from the Kaffre. Yet the Kaffre is his nearest neighbour. To the ordinary distinctions, steatomata on the nates and peculiarities in the reproductive organs have been superadded.

Nevertheless, a very scanty collation gives the following philological similarities; the Hottentot dialects[17] being taken on the one side and the other African languages[18] on the other. I leave it to the reader to pronounce upon the import of the table; adding only the decided expression of my own belief that the coincidences in question are too numerous to be accidental, too little onomatopœic to be organic, and too widely as well as too irregularly distributed to be explained by the assumption of intercourse or intermixture.

Englishsun.
Saabt’koara.
Hottentotsorre.
Coranasorob.
Agowquorah.
Somaulighurrah.
Kruguiro.
Kangajiro.
Wawnjirri.
Englishtongue.
Coranatamma.
Bushmant’inn.
Fertittimi.
Englishneck.
Bushmant’kau.
Darfurkiu.
Englishhand.
Coranat’koam.
Shilluckkiam.
Englishtree.
Coranapeikoa.
Bushmant’hauki.
Shilluckyuke.