Recent Information Has So Superseded Old Ideas About Both Groups Of Islands That I Suggest Several Of The Notes In The 1903 Edition Of Marco Polo Be Recast In Reference To It.

With reference to the Census Report noted above, I may remark that this was the first Census Report ever made on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and according to the custom of the Government of India, such a report has to summarise all available information under headings called Descriptive, Ethnography, Languages.

Under the heading Descriptive are sub-heads, Geography, Meteorology, Geography, History, so that practically my Census Report had to include in a summarised form all the available information there was about the islands at that time. It has a complete index, and I therefore suggest that it should be referred to for any point on which information is required.

NICOBARS.

P. 307. No king or chief. - This is incorrect. They have distinct village communities, governed each by its own chief, with definite rules of property and succession and marriage. See Census Report pp. 214, 212.

Pp. 307-308, Note 1. For Pulo Gomez, see BOWREY, Countries Round the Bay of Bengal, ed. Temple, Hakluyt Society, p. 287 and footnote 4. Bowrey (c. 1675) calls it Pullo Gomus, and a marine journal of 1675 calls it Polo Gomos.

Origin of the name Nicobars. - On this point I quote my paragraph thereon on p. 185, Census Report.

"The situation of the Nicobars along the line of a very ancient trade has caused them to be reported by traders and sea-farers through all historical times.

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