ust now speaking of native family groups observed on the
route between Galle and Colombo, which is a thoroughly typical region,
and may well serve as a truthful picture of such scenes all over the
southern district of Ceylon. They would form admirable subjects for
photographic delineation,--a gratuitous suggestion for the modern
Kodak enthusiast.

The children of eight or nine years, who form a portion of these
groups, are as naked as when they were born, while their parents are
as scantily clad as decency will permit. The boys and girls have
large, brilliant, and intensely black eyes, with a strong promise of a
good degree of intelligence, but their possibilities are doomed to
remain unfulfilled amid such associations as they are born to. A few
more years and they will subside into languid, sensuous beings, like
their progenitors. They do but obey their polarity,--the "cherubim" of
destiny ought to be designated by a harsher name. The men wear a
white cotton cloth wound about their loins. The women have a similar
covering, sometimes adding a short, cotton, jacket-like waist. The
children have monstrously protruding stomachs, like the little darkies
of our Southern States, but yet as a rule they seem to be well and
hearty. The women of the Tamil race, especially, are of good form and
features, much handsomer than the Singhalese of the same sex. It is a
notable fact in this connection that there are fewer women in Ceylon
than men, a circumstance which has furnished a weak argument for some
native writers in favor of polyandry, which is still sanctioned in the
central districts. In the island of Malta, this relative position of
the sexes is entirely reversed.

The Tamil men are of good height, slim, with small limbs yet well
formed, and have pleasing features and bronzed skins, very similar in
hue to our North American Indians. The Singhalese are of a darker
complexion, not so light in figure; they affect European dress, adding
much ornamentation. They hold themselves of a superior class to the
Tamils, engaging only in what they consider a higher line of
occupation. The Tamils form the humbler and laboring population of the
country. They fully recognize the distinction between themselves and
the Singhalese proper, and they are universally called coolies. Caste
is never disregarded among them, its infinite ramifications extending
through all degrees and classes of the people, regulated by
universally accepted ideas. This