198 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
XII. The Hthnology and Climatology of Central Africa. ? 
By R. W. Fe.xin, M.D. F.RS.E., FR.Giog ae 
[Plates IIL.-VII.] 
(Read 16th March 1892. ) 
There is much that is interesting and instructive in the 
climatology and ethnology of any country, and these subjects 
in reference to Africa could undoubtedly form the text of a 
lenethy discourse—firstly, because the climatology of this 
continent is only now becoming comprehensible; and, 
secondly, because there are in Africa many races which may 
be classed as primitive, uncontaminated as yet by the gloss 
of civilisation, and having customs and traditions which are 
the pure product of natural development. eclus, in a book 
recently published, gives one or two happy definitions which 
I will quote :—* The new-born science of ethnography may, I 
think, be considered as the psychology of the species, just as 
demography may stand for its physiology, and anthropology 
represent an enlarged sort of anatomy. Demography and 
ethnology study the great facts of nutrition and reproduction, 
of nativity and mortality—one of the physical, the other of 
the moral nature of man. Demography compares statistical 
data, arranges them in series, finds out their agreements and 
their contrasts, lays bare many a modality of life hitherto 
unknown or ill-understood. Making big figures into an 
instrument of mathematical exactitude, it, like the Pytha- 
goreans, has taken for its motto ‘ Numero pondere mensura.’ 
Ethnography, too, has its large totals—manners and.customs, 
faiths and religions; ages upon ages, tribes, peoples, and 
nations—such are the quantities with which it deals, 
quantities at once algebraic and concrete.” 
Civilised races are far too prone to forget that their insti- 
tutions are not the progress of spontaneous generation, but 
that they are derived from a long-forgotten past; indeed, it 
is perhaps incorrect to use the term long-forgotten, for if we 
had time to examine into the traditions, superstitions, and 
customs even of your enlightened Scotland, we should find 
1The best book of reference on the subject of this paper is The Development 
of Africa, by A. Silva White, F.R.S.E., second edition. 
