The character of the nose is, as those who have studied ethnology in India will appreciate, a most important factor in the differentiation of race, tribe, and class, and in the determination of pedigree. "No one," Mr. Risley writes, [120] "can have glanced at the literature of the subject, and in particular, at the Védic accounts of the Aryan advance, without being struck by the frequent references to the noses of the people whom the Aryans found in possession of the plains of India. So impressed were the Aryans with the shortcomings of their enemies' noses that they often spoke of them as 'the noseless ones,' and their keen perception of the importance of this feature seems almost to anticipate the opinion of Dr. Collignon that the nasal index ranks higher as a distinctive character than the stature or even the cephalic index itself." In the subjoined table, based on the examination of forty members of each class, the high proportion of leptorhine Eurasians, Muhammadans, and Vellalas, with nasal indices ranging between 60 and 70, is at once manifest, and requires no comment:-- 60-70. 70-80. 80-90. 90-100. Eurasians 19 17 3 1 Muhammadans 17 18 4 1 Vellalas 14 22 3 1 Pallis 3 25 9 3 Paraiyans 2 17 19 2 I pass on to the Eurasians of the west coast. My visit to Calicut, the capital of the Malabar district, was by chance coincident with the commemoration of the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Vasco da Gama at Calicut after his discovery of the sea-route from Europe to India. Concerning the origin of the Indo-Portuguese half-breed, I learn [121] that, on his return from the recapture of Goa, Albuquerque brought with him the women he had carried away when the Portuguese were driven out of the place. As soon as affairs became tolerably settled again at that port, he had them converted to Christianity, and married them to Portuguese men. No less than 450 of his men were thus married in Goa, and others who desired to follow their example were so numerous that Albuquerque had great difficulty in granting their requests. The marriage of Portuguese men to native women had already been sanctioned by Dom Manuel, but this privilege was only to be conceded to men of proved character, and who had rendered good service. Albuquerque, however, extended the permission to many far beyond what he was authorised to do, and he took care that the women so married were the daughters of the principal men of the land. This he did in the hope of inducing them to become Christians. To those who were married Albuquerque allotted lands, houses and cattle, so as to give them a start in life, and all the landed property which had been in possession of the Moorish mosques and Hindu pagodas he gave to the