ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 273 



ing the ground in the direction of obtaining a solution, I don't know 

 that I could lay my hand upon much of a very definite character — 

 except as to methods of investigation — save in regard to one point. I 

 have some reason to know that about the year 1860, at any rate, 

 there was nothing more volcanic, more shocking, more subversive of 

 everything right and proper, than to put forward the proposition that 

 as far as physical organization is concerned there is less difference 

 between man and the highest apes than there is between the highest 

 apes and the lowest. My memory carries me back sufficiently to re- 

 mind me that in 1860 that question was not a pleasant one to handle. 

 The other day I was reading a recently published valuable and inter- 

 esting work, 'L'espece humaine,' by a very eminent man, M. de 

 Quatrefages. He is a gentleman who has made these questions his 

 special study, and has written a great deal and very well about them. 

 He has always maintained a temperate and fair position, and has been 

 the opponent of evolutionary ideas, so that I turned with some in- 

 terest to his work as giving me a record of what I could look on as 

 the progress of opinion during the last twenty years. If he has any 

 bias at all, it is one in the opposite direction to that in which my own 

 studies would lead me. I can not quote his words, for I have not the 

 book with me, but the substance of them is that the proposition which 

 I have just put before you is one the truth of which no rational person 

 acquainted with the facts could dispute. Such is the difference which 

 twenty years has made in that respect, and speaking in the presence 

 of a great number of anatomists, who are quite able to decide a question 

 of this kind, I believe that the opinion of M. de Quatrefages on the 

 subject is one they will all be prepared to endorse. Well, it is a com- 

 fort to have got that much out of the way. The second direction in 

 which I think great progress has been made is with respect to the 

 processes of anthropometry, in other words, in the modes of obtaining 

 those data which are necessary for anthropologists to reason upon. 

 Like all other persons who have to deal with physical science, we 

 confine ourselves to matters which can be ascertained with precision, 

 and nothing is more remarkable than the exactness which has been 

 introduced into the mode of ascertaining the physical qualities of man 

 within the last twenty-five years. One can not mention the name of 

 Broca without the greatest gratitude; I am quite sure that, when 

 Professor Flower brings forward his paper on cranial measurements 

 on Monday next, you will be surprised to see what precision of method 

 and what accuracy are now introduced, compared with what existed 

 twenty-five years ago, into these methods of determining the facts of 

 man's structure. If, further, we turn to those physiological matters 

 bearing on anthropology which have been the subject of inquiry within 

 the last score of years, we find that there has been a vast amount of 



VOL. LVIII.— 18 



