owe VWARKABLE ANTICIPATION OF MODERN 
VIEWS ON EVOLUTION. 
HE great pioneer of modern anthropological and 
ethnological research—James Cowles Prichard, was 
born at Ross, in Herefordshire, 11th February, 1786. 
The following brief account of his life is taken from Pro- 
fessor E. B. Tylor’s article in the Fiucyclopedia Britannica 
(1885, vol. xix., pp. 722, 723). Prichard was brought up 
as a member of the Society of Friends, to which body his 
parents belonged. He joined the medical profession, taking 
his Doctor's degree at Edinburgh, ‘“ afterwards reading for a 
year at Trinity College, Cambridge, whence, joining the 
Church of England, he migrated to St. John’s College, 
Oxford, afterwards entering as a gentleman commoner at 
Trinity College, Oxford, but seeking no degree in either 
University. In 1810 he settled at Bristol as a physician.” 
Among his many great achievements in anthropology was 
the proof ‘‘ that the Celtic nations are allied by language with 
the Slavonian, German, and Pelasgian (Greek and Latin), 
thus forming a fourth European branch of the Asiatic stock 
(which would now be called Indo-European or Aryan)”. 
His treatise on the subject, entitled ‘“Zastern Origin of the 
Celtic Nations,” appeared in 1831. ‘It is remarkable that 
the essay by Adolphe Pictet, De ?Affinité des Langues 
Celtigues avec le Sanscrit, which was crowned by the 
French Academy and made its author’s reputation, should 
have been published in 1837 in evident ignorance of the 
earlier and in some respects stricter investigations of 
Prichard.” 
Although Prichard’s memory is much honoured, it 
appears that in one important respect he has not hitherto 
received his due. My friend Professor Meldola lately 
drew my attention to a section of the second volume of 
Researches into the Physical Historyof Mankind (2nd edition, 
1826) which, as he pointed out, anticipated in the clearest 
manner the arguments which have been recently advanced 
