Here The
Naturalist Steps In, And Enables Him To Fill Up This Great Gap In
The Past History Of The Earth.
One of the chief objects of my travels was to obtain evidence of
this nature; and my search after
Such evidence has been rewarded
by great success, so that I have been able to trace out with some
probability the past changes which one of the most interesting
parts of the earth has undergone. It may be thought that the
facts and generalizations here given would have been more
appropriately placed at the end rather than at the beginning of a
narrative of the travels which supplied the facts. In some cases
this might be so, but I have found it impossible to give such an
account as I desire of the natural history of the numerous
islands and groups of islands in the Archipelago, without
constant reference to these generalizations which add so much to
their interest. Having given this general sketch of the subject,
I shall be able to show how the same principles can be applied to
the individual islands of a group, as to the whole Archipelago;
and thereby make my account of the many new and curious animals
which inhabit them both, more interesting and more instructive
than if treated as mere isolated facts.
Contrasts of Races. - Before I had arrived at the conviction that
the eastern and western halves of the Archipelago belonged to
distinct primary regions of the earth, I had been led to group
the natives of the Archipelago under two radically distinct
races. In this I differed from most ethnologists who had before
written on the subject; for it had been the almost universal
custom to follow William von Humboldt and Pritchard, in classing
all the Oceanic races as modifications of one type. Observation
soon showed me, however, that Malays and Papuans differed
radically in every physical, mental, and moral character; and
more detailed research, continued for eight years, satisfied me
that under these two forms, as types, the whole of the peoples of
the Malay Archipelago and Polynesia could be classified. On
drawing the line which separates these races, it is found to come
near to that which divides the zoological regions, but somewhat
eastward of it; a circumstance which appears to me very
significant of the same causes having influenced the distribution
of mankind that have determined the range of other animal forms.
The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both is
sufficiently intelligible. Man has means of traversing the sea
which animals do not possess; and a superior race has power to
press out or assimilate an inferior one. The maritime enterprise
and higher civilization of the Malay races have enabled them to
overrun a portion of the adjacent region, in which they have
entirely supplanted the indigenous inhabitants if it ever
possessed any; and to spread much of their language, their
domestic animals, and their customs far over the Pacific, into
islands where they have but slightly, or not at all, modified the
physical or moral characteristics of the people.
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