the sun is northing; irregular rainfall, but usually dry during the north-east, and very wet during the south-west monsoon. Not only does the rainfall at one place vary from year to year, but there is an extraordinary difference in the returns for places quite close to one another. The official figures in inches for the station at Port Blair, which is situated in by far the driest part of the settlement, were:—
| 1895. | 1896. | 1897. | 1898. | 1899. | 1900. | 1901. |
| 125·64 | 107·28 | 136·41 | 127·22 | 87·01 | 83·28 | 132·50 |
A tidal observatory has also been maintained at Port Blair since 1880.
Flora.—A section of the Forest Department of India has been established in the Andamans since 1883, and in the neighbourhood of Port Blair 156 sq. m. have been set apart for regular forest operations which are carried on by convict labour. The chief timber of indigenous growth is padouk (Pterocarpus dalbergioides) used for buildings, boats, furniture, fine joinery and all purposes to which teak, mahogany, hickory, oak and ash are applied. This tree is widely spread and forms a valuable export to European markets. Other first-class timbers are koko (Albizzia lebbek), white chuglam (Terminalia bialata), black chuglam (Myristica irya), marble or zebra wood (Diospyros kurzii) and satin-wood (Murraya exotica), which differs from the satin-wood of Ceylon (Chloroxylon swietenia). All of these timbers are used for furniture and similar purposes. In addition there are a number of second-and third-class timbers, which are used locally and for export to Calcutta. Gangaw (Messua ferrea) the Assam iron-wood, is suitable for sleepers; and didu (Bombax insigne) is used for tea-boxes and packing-cases. Among the imported flora are tea, Siberian coffee, cocoa, Ceara rubber (which has not done well), Manila hemp, teak, cocoanut and a number of ornamental trees, fruit-trees, vegetables and garden plants. Tea is grown in considerable quantities and the cultivation is under a department of the penal settlement. The general character of the forests is Burmese with an admixture of Malay types. Great mangrove swamps supply unlimited fire-wood of the best quality. The great peculiarity of Andaman flora is that, with the exception of the Cocos islands, no cocoanut palms are found in the archipelago.
Fauna.—Animal life is generally deficient throughout the Andamans, especially as regards mammalia, of which there are only nineteen separate species in all, twelve of these being peculiar to the islands. There is a small pig (Sus andamanensis), important to the food of the people, and a wild cat (Paradoxurus tytleri); but the bats (sixteen species) and rats (thirteen species) constitute nearly three-fourths of the known mammals. This paucity of animal life seems inconsistent with the theory that the islands were once connected with the mainland. Most of the birds also are derived from the distant Indian region, while the Indo-Burmese and Indo-Malayan regions are represented to a far less degree. Rasorial birds, such as peafowl, junglefowl, pheasants and partridges, though well represented in the Arakan hills, are rare in the islands; while a third of the different species found are peculiar to the Andamans. Moreover, the Andaman species differ from those of the adjacent Nicobar Islands. Each group has its distinct harrier-eagle, red-cheeked paroquet, oriole, sun-bird and bulbul. Fish are very numerous and many species are peculiar to the Andaman seas. Turtles are abundant and supply the Calcutta market. Of imported animals, cattle, goats, asses and dogs thrive well, ponies and horses indifferently, and sheep badly, though some success has been achieved in breeding them.
Population.—The Andaman Islands, so near countries that have for ages attained considerable civilization and have been the seat of great empires, and close to the track of a great commerce which has gone on at least 2000 years, are the abode of savages as low in civilization as almost any known on earth. Our earliest notice of them is in a remarkable collection of early Arab notes on India and China (A.D. 851) which accurately represents the view entertained of this people by mariners down to modern times. “The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive. They are black, with woolly hair, and in their eyes and countenances there is something quite frightful . . . . They go naked and have no boats. If they had, they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are windbound and have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crews sometimes fall into the hands of the latter and most of them are massacred.” The traditional charge of cannibalism has been very persistent; but it is entirely denied by the islanders themselves, and is now and probably always has been untrue. Of their massacres of shipwrecked crews, even in quite modern times, there is no doubt, but the policy of conciliation unremittingly pursued for the last forty years has now secured a friendly reception for shipwrecked crews at any port of the islands except the south and west of Little Andaman and North Sentinel Island. The Andamanese are probably the relics of a negro race that once inhabited the S.E. portion of Asia and its outlying islands, representatives of which are also still to be found in the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines. Their antiquity and their stagnation are attested by the remains found in their kitchen-middens. These are of great age, and rise sometimes to a height exceeding 15 ft. The fossil shells, pottery and rude stone implements, found alike at the base and at the surface of these middens, prove that the habits of the islanders have not varied since a remote past, and lead to the belief that the Andamans were settled by their present inhabitants some time during the Pleistocene period, and certainly no later than the Neolithic age. The population is not susceptible of accurate computation, but probably it has always been small. The estimated total at a census taken in 1901 was only 2000. Though all descended from one stock, there are twelve distinct tribes of the Andamanese, each with its own clearly-defined locality, its own distinct variety of the one fundamental language and to a certain extent its own separate habits. Every tribe is divided into septs fairly well defined. The tribal feeling may be expressed as friendly within the tribe, courteous to other Andamanese if known, hostile to every stranger, Andamanese or other. Another division of the natives is into Aryauto or long-shore-men, and the Eremtaga or jungle-dwellers. The habits and capacities of these two differ, owing to surroundings, irrespectively of tribe. Yet again the Andamanese can be grouped according to certain salient characteristics: the forms of the bows and arrows, of the canoes, of ornaments and utensils, of tattooing and of language. The average height of males is 4 ft. 1012 in.; of females, 4 ft. 6 in. Being accustomed to gratify every sensation as it arises, they endure thirst, hunger, want of food and bodily discomfort badly. The skin varies in colour from an intense sheeny black to a reddish-brown on the collar-bones, cheeks and other parts of the body. The hair varies from a sooty black to dark and light brown and red. It grows in small rings, which give it the appearance of growing in tufts, though it is really closely and evenly distributed over the whole scalp. The figures of the men are muscular and well-formed and generally pleasing; a straight, well-formed nose and jaw are by no means rare, and the young men are often distinctly good-looking. The only artificial deformity is a depression of the skull, chiefly among one of the southern tribes, caused by the pressure of a strap used for carrying loads. The pleasing appearance natural to the men is not a characteristic of the women, who early have a tendency to stoutness and ungainliness of figure, and sometimes to pronounced prognathism. They are, however, always bright and merry, are under no special social restrictions and have considerable influence. The women’s heads are shaved entirely and the men’s into fantastic patterns. Yellow and red ochre mixed with grease are coarsely smeared over the bodies, grey in coarse patterns and white in fine patterns resembling tattoo marks. Tattooing is of two distinct varieties. In the south the body is slightly cut by women with small flakes of glass or quartz in zigzag or lineal patterns downwards. In the north it is deeply cut by men with pig-arrows in lines across the body. The male matures when about fifteen years of age, marries when about twenty-six, begins to age when about forty, and lives on to sixty or sixty-five if he reaches old age. Except
