VI 



A REMARKABLE ANTICIPATION OF 

 MODERN VIEWS ON EVOLUTION 



Reprinted from Science Progress, New Series, vol. i, no. 3, April, 

 1897. 

 Revised : additional footnotes , 



THE great pioneer of modern anthropological and 

 ethnological research James Cowles Prichard, was born 

 at Ross, in Herefordshire, February n, 1786. The 

 following brief account of his life is taken from an article 

 by Professor E. B. Tylor, F.R.S. 1 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 Doctors 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 Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, 

 appeared in 1831. ' It is remarkable that the essay by 

 Adolphe Pictet, De I'Affinite" des Langnes Celtiques avec 

 le Sanscrit, which was crowned by the French Academy 

 and made its author's reputation, should have been pub- 

 lished in 1837 in evident ignorance of the earlier and in 

 some respects stricter investigations of Prichard.' 

 1 Encyclopaedia Brilannica, 1885, vol. xix, pp. 722, 723. 



