462 WILLIAM THALBITZER. 
with reference to Greenland, in which certain restrictions are imposed 
upon officials and others in the Danish parts of the country with a view 
to preserving the ancient: cultural remains. The debate in the South 
Greenland Landsraad in 1913 did not pass unnoticed in Denmark, where 
the scientific research in Greenland, both as regards the country and 
the natives, has never lacked friends. Under pressure of circumstances 
then, the ethnographers of the National Museum found themselves at 
last obliged to recognise the fact that they also had certain duties to 
consider in our distant possession. Unfortunately, it seems beyond all 
doubt that the Museum has been somewhat tardy in coming to this 
conclusion, so that certain of the more perishable objects in Eskimo 
culture which were still obtainable a generation or less ago, are now no 
longer to be procured. There are others, private visitors, officials in 
the country, or even functionaries in subordinate administrative posi- 
tions, who have attempted to carry out some part of the honest task in 
Greenland, but without any assistance from the expert knowledge of 
the Museum. And a great deal of scientifically valuable material has 
thus passed out of the eountry (Greenland). 
It must thus appear the more unjustifiable for the Museum now 
to take up the cause of moral obligation against a private collector who, 
as ın the present case, had for years rendered the Museum valuable 
service. In the name of science it should long since have been demanded 
that the First Department of our National Museum itself, by one or 
more expeditions to Greenland, set about the great systematic research 
of the ethnography of this distant colony which up to the present has 
never been made. 
Whetting Irons. 
p. 396—98. Here, as again and again throughout the work, Hr. 
THOMSEN's criticism is raised against an instance where I have expres- 
sed a certain critical doubt, or advanced another explanation than my 
predecessor, or ventured upon some hypothesis, or indicated the pos- 
sible solutions which occur to me, where a single categorical assertion 
would appear to be misplaced. There is nothing in my doing so which 
part of the objects hitherto brought to light to be acquired by foreign 
countries. 
He therefore considered it more proper to establish a Greenland 
Museum which should have the first claim to anything which might be 
found in graves or of remains from the time of the Norsemen. 
Several of the native members then rose to support the motion. 
One of these, the Member for the 1st Division (Josva Kzeisr, Frederiksdal) 
spoke as follows: He agreed with the idea, and likewise considered it 
unreasonable that the grave finds from Greenland should be allowed to 
go out of the country. The Greenlanders had no other history than that 
which the graves could show, and it was important that the people should 
be able to see the weapons and implements formerly in use, that they 
might learn in what manner their forefathers had lived. 
