PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES OF LONDON. 423 



of Borneo, due allowance being made for the vast superiority of the 

 race they belonged to. It is obvious that the progress made by man 

 towards civilization and the abolition of cannibalism must depend on 

 the quality of the race, and the conditions, favourable or unfavour- 

 able, in which its lot has been cast, and the means of receiving 

 instruction from people more advanced than themselves. The two 

 last conditions were totally wanting to the Australians and New 

 Zealanders, and hence they were savages and anthropophagi, and 

 left to themselves, must have ever continued to be so. In the islands 

 of the Pacific, and in the greater part of the American continent, the 

 conditions existed but very partially and imperfectly, but to the 

 extent to which they did, they were a considerable improvement on 

 the Australians and New Zealanders, yet still without producing the 

 general extinction of cannibalism. The conditions of physical geo- 

 graphy, including fertility of soil and the possession of animals 

 amenable to domestication and of plants to cultivation, were highly 

 favourable to Italy, Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, or China, 

 and in these civilization is of high antiquity, the progress made by 

 each varying with the quality of the race. In Northern and Western 

 Europe, the quality of the race of man was of the highest order, but 

 the conditions under which he was placed were unpropitious, and 

 his advance was proportionately slow, and would have been still 

 slower, had he not been aided by the instruction of the oldest civili- 

 zations of Europe. It was in this quarter of Europe that cannibal- 

 ism probably, and human sacrifices certainly, lingered the longest. 



March ItJi, 1865. 



1. A letter was read from M. Larribe, communicated by Sir 

 Eoderick Murchison, President of the Geographical Society, noticing 

 certain Eoman antiquities found at the sources of the Seine, one of 

 the most remarkable being a large Amphora, found in 1842, with 

 the inscription * Deae Sequanse Eufus donavit,' and containing nearly 

 800 ex voto medals of bronze. The object of the writer was to in- 

 quire if any such Eoman temple or antiquities had been met with or 

 were likely to be found at the sources of the Thames. 



2. " On the Aborigines of Chatham Island." By Mr. Travers ; 

 communicated by Sir Charles Nicholson. Waitangi is the chief 

 Maori settlement on Chatham Island ; a smaE but deep river flows 

 close by it into Petre Bay. The huts of the Maories are on the low 



