THE ETHNOLOGICAL WORK OF LANE FOX. 537 



THE ETHNOLOGICAL WORK OF LANE FOX. 



By HENRY BALFOUR, M.A., 



PRESIDENT OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



f I THE earth, as we know, is peopled with races of the most hetero- 

 -■- geneous description, races in all stages of culture. Colonel Lane 

 Fox argued that, making due allowance for possible instances of degra- 

 dation from a higher condition, this heterogeneity could readily be 

 explained by assuming that, while the progress of some races has re- 

 ceived relatively little check, the culture development of other races 

 has been retarded to a greater or less extent, and that we may see 

 represented conditions of at least partially arrested development. In 

 other words, he considered that in the various manifestations of culture 

 among the less civilized peoples were to be seen more or less direct 

 survivals from the earlier stages or strata of human evolution ; vestiges 

 of ancient conditions which have fallen out at different points and have 

 been left behind in the general march of progress. 



Taken together, the various living races of man seem almost to 

 form a kind of living genealogical tree, as it were, and it is as an 

 epiphyte upon this tree that the comparative ethnologist largely thrives ; 

 while to the archeologist it may also prove a tree of knowledge the fruit 

 of which may be eaten with benefit rather than risk. 



This certainly seems to be a legitimate assumption in a general 

 way; but there are numerous factors which should be borne in mind 

 when we endeavor to elucidate the past by means of the present. If 

 the various gradations of culture exhibited by the condition of living 

 races — the savage, semi-civilized, or barbaric, and the civilized races — 

 could be regarded as accurately typifying the successive stages through 

 which the higher forms of culture have been evolved in the course of 

 the ages; if, in fact, the different modern races of mankind might be 

 accepted as so many sections of the human race whose intellectual de- 

 velopment has been arrested or retarded at various definite stages in 

 the general progression, then we should have, to all intents and pur- 

 poses, our genealogical tree in a very perfect state, and by its means we 

 could reconstruct the past and study with ease the steady growth of 

 culture and handicrafts from the earliest simple germs, reflecting the 

 mental condition of primeval man up to the highest manifestations of 

 the most cultured races. 



These ideal conditions are, however, far from being realized. In- 

 tellectual progress has not advanced along a single line, but, in its 



