16 THE FUNCTIONS OF A LOCAL NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
agency of wind, rain, and frost disintegrating the rocks and 
carrying the debris by the rivers into sea and lake to form fresh 
geological formations, and how the ceaseless change goes on, until 
combined with the movements of elevation and depression of the 
earth’s crust, its results are that, ‘‘ Where stood the mountain rolls 
the sea.” 
Then there is Anthropology, or the knowledge of the highest of 
” 
the animal creation, ‘‘man.’’ This isa most comprehensive study, 
and includes the accumulation of data about the race as it now 
exists, the averages of height, weight, shape of skull, and many 
other points in his condition, both physical and mental; his 
written history, customs, folklore, traditions, poetry, and language. 
This is a most important field of work, for in these days, when 
distance is almost annihilated, and such rapid changes take place 
in the composition of the population, due to emigration, gravitation 
to great cities, and other causes, all these facts will, unless now 
recorded, soon fade and be lost in the uniformity produced by 
universal admixture. Even within my memory in this district, local 
distinctions of race which have existed from the days of the 
Vikings have been almost obliterated, and even the preservation 
of a few local and archaic words may be of inestimable value to 
students in ages to come. 
Artists, photographers, and cartographers, should make a 
permanent record of the state of things now existing, so that in 
future every change in the contour of the land and in the 
buildings of a locality may be clearly traced ; also changes in its 
dress and customs. Think of what value to us now would have 
been the use of a few cameras in every town in the middle ages ; 
we should not now have been reduced to hunting through the 
rude representations on old monuments and sepulchral brasses 
for many details of weapons and dress. Many curious costumes 
are only represented on a single brass, and this almost obliterated 
by the wear of the feet of many generations, and also liable to be 
lost by carelessness in church restoration ; and I am sorry to say 
they are lost to the locality in other ways, asa loose brass and 
opportunity leads in certain minds to an acute attack of kleptomania ; 
