474 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



eration to the coniicil of this association by the general committee at 

 the meeting at Newcastle. We have heard from the report of the 

 council what has been done in the matter. The rapidity with which 

 the various native tribes in different parts of the world are either mod- 

 ified, or in some cases exterminated, affords a strong argument for their 

 characteristics, both physical and mental, being investigated without 

 delay. 



There are indeed now but few parts of the world the inhabitants of 

 which have not, through the enterprise of travellers, been brought 

 more or less completely within our knowledge. Even the center of the 

 dark African continent promises to become as well known as the interior 

 of South America, and to the distinguished traveller who has lately 

 returned among us, anthropologists as well as geographers owe their 

 warmest thanks. It is not a little remarkable to find so large a tract 

 of country still inhabited by the same diminutive race of human beings 

 that occupied it at the dawn of European history, and whose existence 

 was dimly recognized by Homer and Herodotus. The story related by 

 the latter about the young men of the Nasamones who made an expe- 

 dition into the interior of Libya and were there taken captive by a race 

 of dwarfs receives curious corroboration from modern travellers. Hero- 

 dotus may indeed slightly err when he reports that the color of these 

 pygmies was black, and when he regards the river on which their prin- 

 cipal town was situated as the Nile. Stanley however who states that 

 there are two varieties of these pygmies, utterly dissimilar in com- 

 plexion, conformation of the head, and facial characteristics, was not 

 the first to re-discover this ancient race. At the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, Andrew Battel, our countryman, who, having been taken captive 

 by the Portuguese, spent many years in the Congo district, gave an 

 account of the Matimbas, a pigmy nation of the height of boys of 

 twelve years old; and in later times Dr. Wolff and others have recorded 

 the existence of the same or similar races in Central Africa. ISTor must 

 we forget that for a detailed account of an Acca skeleton we are 

 indebted to the out-going president of this association, Professor Flower. 

 It is not however my business here to enter into any detailed account of 

 African exploration or anthropology. I have made this incidental 

 mention of these subjects rather from a feeling that in Africa, as well 

 as in Asia and America, native races are in danger of losing their 

 ])rimitive characteristics, if not of partial or total extermination, and 

 that there also the anthropologist and naturalist must take the earliest 

 possible opportunities for their researches. 



