Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India.djvu/20

 whole of Hindustan, and to have spread even further. It shows, on the one hand, traits of relationship to the Australians and Malays ; on the other to the Mongols and Mediterranese. Their skin is either of a light or dark brown colour ; in some tribes, of a yellowish brown. The hair of their heads is, as in Mediterranese, more or less curled ; never quite smooth, like that of the Euthycomi, nor actually woolly, like that of the Ulotrichi. The strong development of the beard is also like that of the Mediterranese. Their forehead is generally high, their nose prominent and narrow, their lips slightly protruding. Their language is now very much mixed with Indo-Germanic elements, but seems to have been originally derived from a very primaeval language."

In the chapter devoted to ' Migration and Distribution of Organisms,' Haeckel, in referring to the continual changing of the distribution of land and water on the surface of the earth, says : " The Indian Ocean formed a continent, which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa. This large continent of former times Sclater has called Lemuria, from the monkey-like animals which inhabited it, and it is at the same time of great importance from being the probable cradle of the human race. The important proof which Wallace has furnished by the help of chronological facts, that the present Malayan Archipelago consists in reality of two completely different divisions, is particularly interesting. The western division, the Indo-Malayan Archipelago, comprising the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, was formerly connected by Malacca with the Asiatic continent, and probably also with the Lemurian continent, and probably also with the Lemurian continent just mentioned.