Section F. 



ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY 



>- ^ 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS t^^J -^* «. <iv 



MR. AUGUSTUS G, HAMILTOT^^ ^"'"^ 



Director, Dominion lluseum, Wellinqton, New Zealand. '* * * * -V* 



[//^ f/;e f?^/^ of going to press, Mr. Ramiltons address ivas not to handJ\ 



PAPERS READ IN SECTION F. 



1.— SOME NOTES ON SAVAGE LIFE IN NEW BRITAIN. 



By REV. B. DASKS, General Secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society of 



Australasia. 



Savage lite is much more complex than many imagine. There 

 are those who seem to think they have fully desci'ibed the savage 

 when they have applied such terms as ignorant, superstitious, cruel. 

 Arc, to him, forgetful of the fact that his life is as much the expx*es- 

 sion of his beliefs touching the world, the present life, and his hopes 

 and fears for the future, as the life and usages of civilised nations 

 are the expression of their convictions upon the same things. There 

 is breadth, depth, and contradictions even in savage life that baffle 

 the anthropoigist. These wild men ask the momentous questions we 

 ask, viz. — Whence'^ Whither? Why? And the answers which satisfy 

 them are found in the manners and customs of the people. 



The savage is aptly called a child of Nature. The animal, 

 vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, in so far as they come within the 

 range of his obsei-vation, are known to him as it is given to few 

 civilised men to know them, and there is to him deep mystery in 

 them all, which mystery he explains to himself by an intense belief 

 in supernatural powers. Savages are the world's most fei^vent 

 spiritualists, believing that behind and in everything there is an 

 appropriate spirit, to which it owes its corporate existence and which 

 constitutes its powers for good or evil, its virtues or its vices. They 

 iierceh'- express this conviction by eating the eyes and heart of their 

 foes, hoping thereby to add to their ov/n sight and courage the sight 

 and courage of their late enemies. The burial of spears, clubs, canoes, 

 wealth, wives, and servants with the deceased chief or husband is 

 founded on the same belief, and the elaborate funeral ceremonies of 

 the ancient Egyptians, observed through thousands of years, testify 

 to the fact that such spiritual beliefs are as old and as widespread as 



