THE ETHNOLOGICAL WORK OF LANE FOX. 539 



ments were very few in number, each, no doubt, serving a number of 

 purposes, the function varying with the requirements of the moment. 

 They had no bows or other appliances for accelerating the flight of 

 missiles, no pottery, no permanent dwellings ; nor is there any evidence 

 of a previous knowledge of such products of higher culture. They 

 seem to represent a race which was isolated very early from contact 

 with higher races; in fact, before they had developed more than the 

 merest rudiments of culture — a race continuing to live under the most 

 primitive conditions, from which they were never destined to emerge. 



Between the Tasmanians, representing in their very low culture the 

 one extreme, and the most civilized peoples at the other extreme, lie 

 races exhibiting in a general way intermediate conditions of advance- 

 ment or retardation. If we are justified, as I think we are, in regard- 

 ing the various grades of culture observable among the more lowly of 

 the still existing races of man as representing to a considerable extent 

 those vanished cultures which in their succession formed the different 

 stages by which civilization emerged gradually from a low state, it 

 surely becomes a very important duty for us to study with energy these 

 living illustrations of early human history in order that the archeolog- 

 ical record may be supplemented and rendered more complete. The 

 material for this study is vanishing so fast with the spread of civiliza- 

 tion that opportunities lost now will never be regained, and already 

 even it is practically impossible to find native tribes which are wholly 

 uncontaminated with the products, good or bad, of higher cultures. 



The arts of living races help to elucidate what is obscure in those 

 of prehistoric times by the process of reasoning from the known to the 

 unknown. It is the work of the zoologist which enables the paleon- 

 tologist to reconstruct the forms of extinct animals from such frag- 

 mentary remains as have been preserved, and it is largely from the 

 results of a comparative study of living forms and their habitats that 

 he is able, in his descriptions, to equip the reconstructed types of a 

 past fauna with environments suited to their structure, and to render 

 more complete the picture of their mode of life. 



In like manner, the work of the ethnologist can throw light upon 

 the researches of the archeologist ; through it broken sequences may be 

 repaired, at least suggestively, and the interpretation of the true na- 

 ture and use of objects of antiquity may frequently be rendered more 

 sure. Colonel Lane Fox strongly advocated the application of the 

 reasoning methods of biology to the study of the origin, phylogeny and 

 etionomics of the arts of mankind, and his own collection demonstrated 

 that the products of human intelligence can conveniently be classified 

 into families, genera, species and varieties, and must be so grouped if 

 their affinities and development are to be investigated. 



It must not be supposed — although some people, through misap- 



