112 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION E. 



further East, contributed in the same year an arresting paper on 

 the " S.E. Natives in the i6th Century, and has since produced 

 a most valuable contribution to the ethnology of the same field 

 in his two volumes upon the " Thonga." Mr. Garbutt has written 

 of Rhodesia, and compared the custom of Egypt and the South ; 

 Mr. Dornan not only writes on native poisons (a subject which 

 the President of Section B last year has also made his own), but 

 has further had the courage to enter the lists, and that from the 

 side of native tradition, in that delicate question which, from 

 time to time, shakes Africa — I mean the Zimbabwe origins, 

 which have been discussed in our Transactions, in the past, by 

 no less an authority than Mr. Hall. While very willing to join 

 with the Oxford Professor in claiming more culture for past 

 generations of natives than we in this sub-continent are always 

 ready to grant, I feel that so weighty a question may not, till 

 the end of the chapter, be settled ; but the very fact that claims 

 and counterclaims of date range over some two millenia, not 

 only in the case of African Zimbabwe, but even in that of British 

 Stonehenge, shows how very little way we have gone in settling 

 the sciences of anthropology and ethnology, and how very little 

 encouragement is at present given, either by government or the 

 public. But there are economic sciences considerably more inti- 

 mate and pressing, not always, perhaps, to my own, but to the 

 public mind, to which are made the masterly contributions of 

 my other Vice-President, Mr. Kingon, especially within his own 

 sphere, the Transkei. I note that he apparently sides with the 

 presidential address of my predecessor in doubting of the 

 weighty warnings, which a veteran authority on the Eastern 

 lands, like Mr. Maurice Evans, gave us, as regards the likelihood 

 of real competition between white and native workers, in case 

 of a labour-market free from the present artificial restraints of 

 law and custom ; a subject of peculiar interest at the present 

 juncture. I note another difi^erence of opinion between one of 

 the writers last mentioned and Dr. Loram in his book, so full of 

 valuable statistics, on the education of the native, and ask, " Is 

 it, or is it not, the fact that they, at the age of puberty, become, 

 any more than whites, mind atrophied ? 



VI. 



There are grave questions, and evidently at preseiU it is 

 hopeless to expect anything but disagreement among the doctors. 

 If we turn to the missionaries we find the same disagreement, 

 but here the shocking neglect of professional training on the 

 physchological side for dealing with foreign nations oft'ers very 

 largely the explanation. Let me give an example of a moot 

 point among us; the majorities in our missionary synods and 

 conferences have legislated against the traditional manner of 

 native customs like circumcision, with a minority protest, to 

 which I confess that, after study, I incline. What has struck 

 me is the very little vahd evidence that most missionaries have 



