ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK IN EUROPE. 71 



now much interested in studying means of personal identifica- 

 tion, and is studying finger-tip impressions as identification ma- 

 terial. All at present measured in the laboratory leave their 

 finger-tip marks behind them. 



Americans are particularly interested in the little Blackmore 

 Museum at Salisbury, although at present it cuts no great figure 

 in anthropological work. There is here a good building with fair 

 collections of prehistorics and some ethnographical specimens. 

 The bulk of the collections made by Squier and Davis in their 

 exploration of American mounds, and described in their famous 

 work, the Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, is here. 

 This collection includes a larger number of stone pipes of the 

 "mound-builder type " than any American collection. There are 

 also good things from Central America and Peru. In addition to 

 the specimens, there are in this building a great series of photo- 

 graphs of American Indians and a wonderful library of Americana. 

 The story of William Blackmore's life is almost a romance, and 

 this little American museum in the quaint old English town is 

 one of the strangest of strange things. Would that funds and 

 workers might be supplied to make it felt as a power in the 

 study of American anthropology ! 



Both of the great universities are at work. Oxford owns the 

 Pitt Rivers Museum, unique in conception. The collection is due 

 to the initiative of Colonel Lane Fox (General Pitt Rivers), and 

 has grown and developed under his guidance and that of Prof. E. 

 B. Tylor and Mr. Henry Balfour. The objects of the museum are 

 set forth in the following announcement, which is posted in vari- 

 ous places : 



"The specimens, ethnological and prehistoric, are arranged 

 with a view to demonstrate either actually or hypothetically the 

 development and continuity of the material arts from the simpler 

 to the more complex forms; to explain the conservatism of 

 lower and barbarous races and the pertinacity with which they 

 retain their ancient types of art; to show the variations by 

 means of which progress has been affected and the application of 

 varieties to distinct uses; to exhibit survivals or vestiges of 

 ancient forms which have been retained through natural selection 

 in the more advanced stages of arts and reversions to such types ; 

 to illustrate the arts of prehistoric times as far as practicable by 

 those of existing savages in corresponding stages of civilization ; 

 to assist the question of the monogenesis or poly genesis of certain 

 arts whether they are exotic or indigenous in the country where 

 they are now found ; and, finally, to aid in the solution of the 

 problem whether man has arisen from the condition of the brutes 

 or fallen from a high stage of perfection. To these ends objects 

 of the same class from different countries have been brought to- 



