P OP ULAR MIS CELL ANY. 



141 



but thick-lipped, and full of some kind of 

 black paste. This paste, being partly cut 

 away with the scissors, disclosed some 

 much worn and very brittle teeth, which, 

 moreover, are white and well preserved. 

 The mustache and beard are thin. They 

 seem to have been kept shaved during 

 life, but were probably allowed to grow 

 during the king's last illness ; or they may 

 have grown after death. The hairs are 

 white, like those of the head and eye- 

 brows, but are harsh and bristly, and from 

 two to three millimetres in length. The 

 skin is of earthy brown splotched with 

 black. Finally, it may be said that the face 

 of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face 

 of the living king. The expression is un- 

 intellectual, perhaps slightly animal; but, 

 even under the somewhat grotesque dis- 

 guise of mummification, there is plainly to 

 be seen an air of sovereign majesty, of re- 

 solve, and of pride. The rest of the body 

 is as well preserved as the head ; but in 

 consequence of the reduction of the tissues 

 its aspect is less life-like. . . . The corpse 

 is that of an old man, but of a vigorous 

 and robust old man. We know, indeed, 

 that Eameses II reigned for sixty-seven 

 years, and that he must have been nearly 

 one hundred years old when he died." An- 

 other mummy, which had been laid in the 

 sarcophagus of Queen Nofretari, queen of 

 Ahmes I of the eighteenth dynasty, proved, 

 when unbandaged, to be the mummy of 

 Rameses III, another great king, of the 

 twentieth dynasty. It was less well pre- 

 served than the mummy of Rameses II. 

 The physiognomy is more delicate and more 

 intelligent ; but the height of the body is 

 less, the shoulders are less wide, and the 

 strength of the man was inferior. The two 

 mummies, replaced in the glass cases, will 

 be exhibited with their faces uncovered in 

 the museum at Eoulak. 



Maternal Families. — Sir George Camp- 

 bell, president, began his address to the 

 Anthropological Section of the British As- 

 sociation with some observations on the 

 races of India. He spoke particularly of 

 the Khassyahs, a very peculiar people of 

 the hill regions, with highly developed con- 

 stitutional and elective forms of govern- 

 ment, who were also specially interesting as 



exhibiting an excellent specimen of the ma- 

 triarchal or matriherital system fully car- 

 ried out under recognized and well-defined 

 law among a civilized people. The result 

 of his observation of them had been to 

 separate in his mind the two systems of 

 matriheritage and polyandry, and to sug- 

 gest that polyandry was really only a local 

 accident, the result of scarcity of women. 

 Among the Khassyahs there was no poly- 

 andry, so far as he had been able to learn, 

 though there was great facility for divorce ; 

 and heritage through the female became 

 quite intelligible when he saw that the women 

 did not leave the maternal home and family 

 and join any other family, as do the Aryans. 

 They are the stock-in-trade of the family, 

 the queen-bees, as it were ; they take to 

 themselves husbands — only one at a time — 

 and, if he is divorced, they may take another ; 

 but the husband is a mere outsider belong- 

 ing to another family. The property of the 

 woman goes in the woman's family, the 

 property of the man in his own maternal 

 family. It should be added, however, that 

 in these maternal families, though the heri- 

 tage comes through the female, the males 

 rule. The extension of our accurate infor- 

 mation respecting the diverse peoples of 

 India might throw a flood of light on the 

 social history of the human race. The 

 speaker then proceeded to what he an- 

 nounced as the main object of his address 

 — to recommend the systematic and scien- 

 tific cultivation of man, which he might call 

 homi-culture, with a view both to physical 

 and mental qualities. It seems very sad, in- 

 deed, he said, that when so much has been 

 done to improve and develop dogs, cattle, 

 oysters, and cabbages, nothing whatever has 

 been done for man, and he is left very much 

 where he was when we have the first au- 

 thentic records of him. Knowledge, educa- 

 tion, arts, he has no doubt acquired ; but 

 there seems to be no reason to suppose that 

 the individual man is physically or mentally 

 a superior creature to what he was five 

 thousand years ago. We are not sure that 

 under very modern influences he may not 

 retrograde. In regard to animals and plants 

 we have very largely mastered the principles 

 of heredity and culture, and the modes by 

 which good qualities may be maximized and 

 bad ones minimized. Why should not man 



