xviii Proceedings. [March i8th, igij. 



Ordinary Meeting, March i8th, 1913. 



The President, Professor F. E. Weiss, D.Sc, F.L.S., 

 in the Chair. 



A vote of thanks was accorded the donors of the books 

 upon the table. Amongst these were : — " Civil War Messages 

 and Proclamations of Wisconsin War Governors " (8vo., n.p., 

 1 91 2), Wisconsin History Commission, Reprints No. 2, "^ 

 Narrative of Service ivith the Thi7-d Wisconsin Infantry, ^^ by 

 J. W. Hinkley (8vo,n.p., 1912), presented by the Wisconsin 

 History Commission, Madison; and '■'■ Schnee- mid Eisverhdlt- 

 nisse in Finland im Winter i8gS-iSgg" by W. W. Korhonen 

 (fol. Kuopio, 19 1 2), presented by the Helsingfors Meteorlogische 

 Central-Anstalt. 



Mr. Thomas Thorp, F.R.A.S., exhibited celloidine castings 

 he had made of gratings ruled on Professor Rowland's machine 

 at the Johns Hopkins University, U.S.A. These, having deeper 

 grooves than those in ordinary use, gave much brighter spectra 

 and were consequently of greater value. 



A paper, entitled "A Criticism of some Modern 

 Tendencies in Prehistoric Anthropology," was read by 

 Mr. W. H. SuTCLiFFE, F.G.S. 



This paper is printed in full in the Memoirs. 



Professor Boyd Dawkins said he accepted the conclusions 

 in Mr. Sutcliffe's timely and well-thought-out paper that follows 

 the lines sketched out some thirty years ago in " Early Man in 

 Britain," and brings the enquiry into the antiquity of man down 

 to the knowledge of to-day. It emphasises the need of curbing 

 the archaeological imagination and of approaching the question 

 by the strict inductive method by which all sciences have been 

 evolved out of observations of varying merit, sound, non-proven, 

 or false. The first of these three classes alone offers a safe 

 basis for scientific theory, the second should be put, as Lord 

 Avebury suggests, to a suspense account, and the third should 



