472 WILLIAM THALBITZER. 
IV. “Concluding Remarks”. 
The foregoing will, I trust, have made clear, by a close examina- 
tion of Hr. THOMSEN’s objections, that his criticism is prejudiced and 
essentially misleading, even though he may be right in regard to certain 
points. And as to the latter, I can hardly imagine that anyone will be 
surprised at the occurrence of errors in a work of so great extent, and 
partly, too, of a pioneering character, the more so since the writer has 
in various instances lacked the support of loyal assistance on the part 
of the Museum, where great treasures of ethnographical material have 
been suffered to repose in the obscurity of the unknown. It will easily 
be seen that most of the failings in my work could have been avoided 
if I had been effectively supported by the Museum at the time. 
To answer every one of the objections which my critic has scraped 
together would be as fruitless as it is unnecessary. A criticism based, 
as this is, upon trifles, and having continual recourse to far-fetched 
arguments, veiled insinuations, to ways that are dark and tricks that 
are vain, is hardly calculated to inspire confidence. 
The fact of the matter is, that this critical effort as a whole suffers 
from an inherent structural weakness, being directed towards two distinct 
ends; the one, under cover of a pretended scientific paper to justify 
the ways of the Museum to man; the other, to furnish expert informa- 
tion upon ethnographical questions. The quality of the expert informa- 
tion is not improved by this alliance. Hr. THOMSEN does not appear 
as one scientifically interested in the problems at issue, and has not 
in any single instance dealt honestly and positively with the subject 
matter. 
р. 417. — It is nothing less than an enormous exaggeration on the 
part of my critic to assert that he has only touched upon “indisputable 
errors”. Save for his “corrections” of my references to the Museum 
collections and some few other amendments, he has not succeeded in 
deciding any point whatever. He has, however, in numerous cases 
demanded the impossible, the unattainable, by insisting on “definite 
results” even where the problem was that of some find not hitherto 
explained, some indefinable peculiarity in an implement, or a doubtful 
fragment. In such cases, any explanation offered must almost of neces- 
sity be “disputable”. 
The fact of the matter is, that I was the first to furnish accurate 
descriptions of numerous objects belonging to the material culture of 
Greenland, which have not previously been described in detail; some 
of them, moreover, being hardly known at all from the literature publish- 
ed up to that date. Not a few questions remained unsolved; others 
were answered by a probable hypothesis. In certain instances I have, 
after years of study and research, involving hesitation and careful con- 
