proceedings: anthropological society 411 



Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (a member of the Royal Society of Melbourne), 

 Drs. S wanton, Michelson, and Folkmar, and others took part in 

 the discussion. Special mention was made of a skull, probably pleisto- 

 cene, recently discovered in the Darling Downs, this being the oldest 

 of human remains so far found in Australia. Many photographs 

 brought from Australia were shown by Miss Breton, including views 

 of a settlement of aborigines 40 miles from Melbourne ; also arrow heads 

 and other artifacts. Miss Breton also read printed and manuscript 

 accounts of the natives as seen about 1830 by her father, a naval officer, 

 who considered the Australians the lowest race he had met in any part 

 of the world. 



Daniel Folkmar, Secretary. 



At the 499th regular and 37th annual meeting held April 18, 1916,, 

 Dr. John R. Swanton, President of the Society, read a paper on The 

 influence of inheritance on human culture. The speaker stated that 

 he would apply the term heredity to the inalienable things which the 

 individual receives in body and mind through ancestors, and the 

 term inheritance to alienable ideas and things which have been trans- 

 mitted to him by the entire social body into which he was born. 



The environment which one inherits is of two kinds, the environ- 

 ment of unaffected nature and the environment which previous genera- 

 tions have brought into being by their action upon nature. The direct 

 action of nature has been much dwelt upon and would appear at first 

 sight fundamental, but, on inquiring what environment is, we find that 

 all depends upon the amount of environment which a people is able 

 to grasp. Thus the same area may include tribes of very different 

 planes of development, and the culture of succeeding generations in 

 the same area may be wide apart. The history of man exhibits a 

 constantly greater grasp of environment by most peoples of the earth, 

 a grasp which extends farther and farther into the past, owing to 

 improved methods of recording, and brings humanity more and more 

 in touch with the future. Speaking in economic terms this heaped-up 

 wealth is the capital of humanity, with which more capital is created 

 in the present, to be again transmitted. All of it is not, however, 

 of social value. The ideas which come to us down the stream of time 

 may be false and the institutions and other creations may be injurious. 

 There is a conservative instinct which tends to preserve what is of no 

 real utility, an instinct comparable in many ways with that biological 

 conservatism which tends to preserve vestigial organs in animals. 

 Many such elements seem to have resulted from the perversion of 

 what was once of value, bat others appear never to have had any 

 excuse for being. 



One of the most pernicious of all appears to be that which permits 

 the ownership of a disproportionate share of world capital to limited 

 or privileged classes. Monopoly in learning, however, has been gradu- 

 ally destroyed by the multiplication of books, journals, and other 

 means of education, while monopoly in things still continues. We are 



