Anniversary Address to the Ethnological Society. 337 



Society in the Samoan Islands. A still more encouraging 

 token of the general diffusion of knowledge on this svibject, 

 and of the beneficial results likely to arise from associations 

 like our own, is to be traced in the works of maritime ex- 

 plorators, or of persons who have either been sent out by 

 Government, or induced by motives of individual enterprise, 

 to embark on voyages of discovery to distant countries. In 

 -the reports which have been published of late years by per- 

 sons returning from such expeditions, we do not find, as here- 

 tofore, mei'e extracts from log-books, interspersed with such 

 occasional remarks on the countries visited and their inhabi- 

 tants, as were fitted only to display the ignorance of the 

 writer on all subjects beyond the sphere of his technical pur- 

 suit. Many of the late voyagers (and especially of those ap- 

 pointed on Government expeditions), who have been induced 

 to publish an account of their discoveries, have proved them- 

 selves to be persons highly informed in the various depart- 

 ments of science, and competent to the task of extending the 

 sphere of our knowledge as to the history of human races 

 and languages. I shall only advert, by way of proof, to the 

 publications of Captain Fitzroy and Mr Darwin, to those of 

 Captain Gray, and to the narrative of my late excellent and 

 much-lamented friend, Mr G. W. Earle, who, if he had sur- 

 vived the voyage on which, to the deep grief of his friends, 

 and great loss to the cause of science, he has lately perished, 

 would have added much to what he has already contributed 

 towards the history of the native races of the Austral Seas. 



Ethnology does not, however, owe its late rapid extension 

 to those only who have cultivated it for its own sake, but is 

 perhaps still more indebted to the attention which has been 

 given by learned men and learned societies to correlative in- 

 ([uiries, bearing more or less directly on the history of the 

 human race. In order to form a correct idea of the present 

 state of ethnology, and the prospect of its future extension, 

 we must for a brief space direct our notice to the progress 

 of these investigations, and to the results obtained by them. 



New light has been thrown of late on the history of na- 

 tions, and particularly on the history of those nations which 

 are supposed to be the most anciently civilised, by researches 



