A SUGGESTION FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK ix NOVA SCOTIA. 

 -By WALTER H. PREST, Bedford, N. S. 



Read 13th February, 1911. 



A a lover, rather than a student, of anthropology, I take 

 upon myself the task of laying this appeal before the members 

 of this society. The absence of a real anthropological society 

 has been filled to a slight extent by our Nova Scotian Institute of 

 Science, and also by a recently formed branch of the Archaeolo- 

 gical Society of America. Something has been done in ethnologi- 

 cal research, especially by Mr. Piers who, a few years ago, read 

 a couple of long papers before the Institute on the Indian relics 

 now in the Provincial Museum at Halifax. At one or two 

 county museums some Indian relics are stored which may also 

 reveal to a critical mind their yet hidden import. 



But the osteological remains of our Nova Scotia Indian are 

 noticeable by their absence; and his physical characteristics, 

 his relations, anthropologically speaking, with his neighbors, 

 are confined to generalizations. Micmac anthropometry as a 

 local study is a thing of the future. The language, customs, 

 history, and origin of the Micmas alone is to some an interest- 

 ing theme ; but back of the Micmacs and their ancestry stretches 

 a vista of possibilities in anthropology that only patient and 

 persevering labor can open up. There on the borderland of 

 geology lies the secret of the earliest peopling of America : and 

 why should not the caves and clays of Nova Scotia rival the 

 gravels of Trenton, the lavas of Idaho, or the loess of Lansing, 

 in carrying back the antiquity of man. 



There are yet many questions to answer regarding the 

 peopling of America; pre-glacial or inter-glacial man being, 

 I suppose, the most important and most warmly debated. Yet 



(35) 



