the most difficult group to classify--the aborigines of
the interior, and of the hill ranges of Central India, the Kols, Gonds,
Bhils, and others which have certain characteristics of the
Mongolian, but with skins almost as dark as the Negro, and the full
eye of the Caucasian. The main body of these tribes, which I should
feel inclined to classify under Fischer's _H. Polynesius_, have been
divided by Indian ethnologists into two large groups--the Kolarians
and Dravidians. The former comprise the Juangs, Kharrias, Mundas,
Bhumij, Ho or Larka Kols, Santals, Birhors, Korwas, Kurs, Kurkus or
Muasis, Bhils, Minas, Kulis. The latter contains the Oraons, Malers,
Paharis of Rajamahal, Gonds and Kands.

The Cheroos and Kharwars, Parheyas, Kisans, Bhuikers, Boyars,
Nagbansis, Kaurs, Mars, Bhunyiars, Bendkars form another great group
apart from the Kolarians and Dravidians, and approximating more to
the Indian variety of the Japetic class.

Then there are the extremely low types which one has no hesitation
in assigning to the lowest form of the Polynesian group, such as the
Andamanese, the jungle tree-men of Chittagong, Tipperah, and the
vast forests stretching towards Sambhulpur.

On these I would now more particularly dwell as points of comparison
with the rest of the animal kingdom. I have taken but a superficial
view of the varieties of the higher types of the human race in India,
for the subject, if thoroughly entered into, would require a volume
of no ordinary dimensions; and those who wish to pursue the study
further should read an able paper by Sir George Campbell in the
'Journal of the Asiatic Society' for June 1866 (vol. xxxv. Part II.),
Colonel Dalton's 'Ethnology of Bengal,' the Rev. S. Hislop's
'Memoranda,' and the 'Report of the Central Provinces Ethnological
Committee.' There is as yet, however, very little reliable
information regarding the wilder forms of humanity inhabiting dense
forests, where, enjoying apparently complete immunity from the
deadly malaria that proves fatal to all others, they live a life but
a few degrees removed from the Quadrumana.

I have in my book on the Seonee District described the little colonies
in the heart of the Bison jungles. Clusters of huts imbedded in
tangled masses of foliage, surrounded by an atmosphere reeking with
the effluvia of decaying vegetation, where, unheedful of the great
outer world beyond their sylvan limits, the Gonds pass year after
year of uneventful lives.