Note 33 — Introduction.

In discussing racial admixture, Quatrefages writes as follows.33 “Parfois on trouve encore quelques tribus qui ont conservé plus on moins intacts tous les caractères de leur race. Les Coorumbas du Malwar [Malabar] et du Coorg paraissent former un noyau plus considérable encore, et avoir conservé dans les jungles de Wynaad une indépendence à peu près complète, et tous leurs caractères ethnologiques.” The purity of blood and ethnological characters of various jungle tribes are unhappily becoming lost as the result of contact metamorphosis from the opening up of the jungles for planter’s estates, and contact with more civilised tribes and races, both brown and white. In illustration, I may cite the Kānikars of Travancore, who till recently were in the habit of sending all their women into the seclusion of the jungle on the arrival of a stranger near their settlements. This is now seldom done, and some Kānikars have in modern times settled in the vicinity of towns, and become domesticated. The primitive short, dark-skinned and platyrhine type, though surviving, has become changed, and many leptorhine or mesorhine individuals above middle height are to be met with. The following are the results of measurements of Kānikars in the jungle, and at a village some miles from Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore:—