82 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



I am called upon to face them at thirty-six hours' notice? I will 

 not apologize; I will do the best I can. 



I quite understand that Major Powell, who is a man who gener- 

 ally has a good reason for everything that he does, had a good 

 reason for desiring that an anthropologist from England should say 

 something as to the present state of the new and growing science 

 in England as compared with its condition in America — for believ- 

 ing that some communication would be acceptable between the old 

 country and the new upon a subject where the inhabitants of both 

 have so much interest in common, and can render to one another 

 so much service in the direction of their work. And therefore I 

 take it that I am to say before you this evening, without elaborate 

 oratory and without even carefql language, how the problems of 

 American anthropology present themselves to the English mind. 



Now, one of the things that Ixis struck me most in America, from 

 the anthropological point of view, is a certain element of old- 

 fashionedness. I mean old-fashionedness in the strictest sense of 

 the word — an old-fashionedness which goes back to the time of the 

 colonization of America. Since the Stuart time, though America, 

 on the whole, has become a country of most rapid progress in 

 development, as compared with other districts of the world, there 

 has prevailed in certain parts of it a conservatism of even an intense 

 character. In districts of the older States, away from the centres 

 of population, things that are old-fashioned to modern Europe 

 have held their own with a tenacity' somewhat surprising. If I 

 ever become possessed of a spinning-wheel, an article of furniture 

 now scarce in England, I can hardly get a specimen better than 

 in Pennsylvania, where " my great-grandmother's spining-wheel" is 

 shown — standing, perhaps, in the lumber-room, perhaps in an or- 

 namental place in the drawing-room — oftener than in any other 

 country that I ever visitied. 



In another respect Pennsylvania has shown itself to me fruitful of 

 old-fashioned products. I was brought up among the Quakers — 

 like so many, I dare say, who are present ; for the number of times 

 in the week, or even in the day in which it occurs that those whom 

 one meets prove to be at least of Quaker descent, represents a pro- 

 portion which must be highly pleasant to the Quaker mind. In 

 the history of the Society of the Friends there has recently come 

 out a fact unknown, especially to the Friends themselves. Their 

 opinion has always been that they came into existence in the neigh- 



