from waging a war of extermination against the original inhabitants is the fear of the poisoned arrow which the Negrito directs against his enemy from behind an ambush. In view of these facts it is not difficult to understand the almost universal isolation of primitive man at the present time. On the other hand, travellers who have been admitted into the lives of the primitive tribes of Malacca and Ceylon and have sought to gain their friendship, unanimously assure us that, whenever a person has once succeeded in coming close to these people and in overcoming their distrust, he finds their outstanding characteristics to be good nature and readiness to render assistance. We may, therefore, be justified in assuming that the seclusion of primitive man was not an original condition, but that it grew up, here and elsewhere, as a result of the war of extermination to which he was exposed on the part of the races attempting to crowd him out of a large part of his territory. Before this state of affairs arose, barter also could scarcely have possessed that character of secrecy which only fear and hatred could give it. In all probability the intercourse which necessarily took place in early times between the older inhabitants and the newer peoples, led to a competition of languages in which the poorer and less developed language of primitive man inevitably succumbed. Nevertheless, the primitive language may also have quietly exercised a reciprocal influence upon the more advanced language. An observation that we cannot escape, even on far higher stages of linguistic development, is the fact that, in such a struggle between a superior minority and a less civilized majority, the former determines the main stock of words, and even, under favourable conditions, the grammatical form, whereas the latter exercises a decisive influence on pronunciation. That a similar process occurred in connection with the displacement of primitive languages, the language of the Bushmen offers proof. This is essentially a Hottentot dialect, even though it is characterized by certain traits of primitive thought. The Hottentots, however, have derived their well-known clacking sounds from the Bushmen, who also gave these sounds to the languages of the Bantu peoples.