JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D.,

SENIOR MINISTER OF THE SCOTS CHURCH, AND PRINCIPAL OF THE
AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE, SYDNEY; AUTHOR OF AN HISTORICAL

"Omissis ergo hujusce terrenæ philosophiæ authoribus, nihil
certi asserentibus, aggrediamur viam rectam.”

LACTANTIUS de Falsa Religione, lib. i. c. 1.

LONDON:

COCHRANE AND MICRONE,

WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL.

1834.

PRINTED BY A. J. VALPY,

RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.

INTRODUCTION.

IN the course of my second voyage from New South Wales to England, in the year 1830, I was led to devote a few days, after crossing the Line from the southward, to an attempt to ascertain the manner in which the islands of the South Seas had been originally peopled, and to inquire whether there was any affinity between the languages and the institutions and customs of their singular inhabitants, and those of any other known division of the family of man. I was induced to enter on this particular branch of literary and philosophical inquiry, partly from a natural fondness for such investigations, but chiefly from the growing importance of the South Sea Islands, both as a field for missionary labour and for