Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait121878roya).pdf/38

 to be written. Probably they are not all known. Those unexplored regions of which we have been speaking are the very places in which one might expect to find them, driven back into the jungle by the advance of even the Malay notion of civilization. And the fortunate man who discovers anything about them should learn all he can at once, and put it down in writing at once, before an irruption of the "orang putih," or, as I have heard M. Maclay call them, the "semut putih," coming into their retired haunts has the usual effect of causing them to dwindle more and more, and get more and more absorbed among the most sympathetic of their native neighbours, till in a little time, they and all their peculiarities of speech, of manners and customs, and ways of thought, disappear from off the face of the earth.

I have only mentioned a very few of those paths along which the Society hopes to go in pursuit of knowledge. There is no doubt about the fact that there is plenty of work to be done. It remains for me just to indicate the means by which we hope that some of it may get done.

The first is by Association. The weak point in Mr. Logan's brave attempt was that he was alone responsible for the management of the Journal. He seems to have been most heartily supported at first, and he had a brilliant success; but any one may see from the table of contents that, as time went on, the burden began to fall on him with a weight which no man out here would be likely to sustain long. I do not know what it was that made him give up the undertaking in 1862, but I should think, from the look of the thing, that the want of sufficient co-operation had something to do with it. And, as must happen to an undertaking which depends, in the main, upon the energy and enthusiasm of a single individual, when he gave up the work it came utterly to an end. It is to be hoped that this danger will be averted by our uniting ourselves in a Society. A Society, if it starts with a good stock of vital power, and has a definite end to accomplish, may expect to be long-lived. Individuals are removed, and some lose the little interest they ever had in the matter and drop away. This is to be looked for. But others remain; and new members are constantly enlisted to fill up the ranks. I think we have every reason to consider that we do make our start with a considerable amount of vitality. The number of members, as we have just heard, is now nearly a hundred; and considering how short a time has elapsed