THE STUDY OF MAN. 303 



THE STUDY OF MAK* 



By ALEXANDEE MACALISTER, M. D., F. E. S. 



ON an irregular and unfenced patch of waste land, situated on 

 the outskirts of a small town in which I spent part of my 

 boyhood, there stood a notice hoard bearing the inscription, " A 

 Free Coup," which, when translated into the language of the 

 southron, conveyed the intimation, " Rubbish may be shot here/' 

 This place, with its ragged mounds of unconsidered trifles, the 

 refuse of the surrounding households, was the favorite play- 

 ground of the children of the neighborhood, who found a treas- 

 ury of toys in the broken tiles and oyster-shells, the crockery and 

 cabbage-stalks, which were liberally scattered around. Many a 

 make-believe house and road, and even village, was constructed 

 by these mimic builders out of this varied material, which their 

 busy little feet had trodden down until its undulated surface 

 assumed a fairly coherent consistence. 



Passing by this place ten years later I found that its aspect 

 had changed ; terraces of small houses had sprung up, mushroom- 

 like, on the unsavory foundation of heterogeneous refuse. Still 

 more recently I notice that these in their turn have been swept 

 away, and now a large factory, wherein some of the most ingen- 

 ious productions of human skill are constructed, occupies the 

 site of the original waste. 



This commonplace history is, in a sense, a parable in which is 

 set forth the past, present, and possible future of that accumula- 

 tion of lore in reference to humanity to which is given the name 

 Anthropology, and for the study of which this section of our 

 Association is set apart. At first nothing better than a heap of 

 heterogeneous facts and fancies, the leavings of the historian, of 

 the adventurer, of the missionary, it has been for long, and alas 

 is still, the favorite playground of dilettanti of various degrees of 

 seriousness. But upon this foundation there is rapidly rising a 

 more comely superstructure, fairer to see than the original chaos, 

 but still bearing marks of transitoriness and imperfection, and 

 I dare hazard the prediction that this is destined in the course of 

 time to give place to the more solid fabric of a real science of 

 anthropology. 



We cannot yet claim that our subject is a real science in the 

 sense in which that name is applied to those branches of knowl- 

 edge, founded upon ascertained laws, which form the subjects of 

 most of our sister sections ; but we can justify our separate exist- 



* Vice-presidential address before the Section of Anthropology of the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science. 



