ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 81 



Speculation upon the period of time represented by this section 

 would be useless, and an attempt to correlate the events recorded 

 with those shadowed forth in tradition would be equally vain. The 

 earliest period is probably beyond the ken of tradition, and the last 

 marks the historic period of Aztec occupation. 



Special Session, October ii, 1884. 



In accordance with a call of the Council, the Society met in special 

 session at Columbian University Hall, for the purpose of listening 

 to an address from Prof. E. B. Tvlor, of Oxford University, Eng- 

 land. 



Through invitation extended by. order of the council there were 

 also present members of the Philosophical and Biological Societies, 

 of the Cosmos Club, as well as officers, professors and students of 

 Columbian University. 



The Society was called to order by President Powell, who in a 

 few words introduced the speaker, who delivered the following ad- 

 dress on — 



"HOW THE PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY PRESENT THEM- 

 SELVES TO THE ENGLISH MIND." 



I have seldom, ladies and gentlemen, felt myself in a more diffi- 

 cult position than I do at this moment. Yesterday morning, when 

 we returned from an expedition out into the far west— an expedition 

 which your President was to have joined, but which, to our, great 

 regret, he was obliged to give up— I heard that at this meeting of 

 the Anthropological Society of Washington I should be called upon 

 to make, not merely a five-minutes' speech, but a subtantial address; 

 and since that time my mind has been almost entirely full of the 

 new things that I have been seeing and hearing in the domain of 

 anthropology in this city. I have been seeing the working of that 

 unexampled institution, the Bureau of Ethnology, and studying the 

 collections which, in connection with the Smithsonian Institution, 

 have been brought in from the most distant quarters of the conti- 

 nent ; and, after that, in odd moments, I have turned it over in my 

 mind, what can I possibly say to the Anthropological Society when 

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