AIMS OF THE STUDY OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 605 



valleys by slowly crossing and recrossing them, like a turner's chisel. 

 Once at their limit on a given side, they may be imagined to halt and 

 turn back. The form of the bottom is changed and the point of great- 

 est activity transferred from one side to the other ; the sand-bars are 

 first removed, and then the willow-belt is carried away ; next they 

 attack the forest of cottonwoods, and mercilessly sacrifice these ; still 

 undaunted, they invade the higher parts of the valley, wear away 

 wide stretches of plain, and slowly march up to the foot of the ad- 

 jacent hills and mountains, which they also attack and undermine, 

 until, checked by the increasing quantity of debris, and driven back 

 by the very magnitude of their own trophies, they beat a retreat, only 

 to repeat for the thousandth time the process which we have thus has- 

 tily sketched. 



AIMS OF THE STUDY OF ANTHKOPOLOGY.* 



By PBorKssoB WILLIAM H. FLOWER, F. R. S. 



ONE of the great difficulties with regard to making anthropology 

 a special subject of study, and devoting a special organization 

 to its promotion, is the multifarious nature of the branches of knowl- 

 edge comprehended under the title. This very ambition, which en- 

 deavors to include such an extensive range of knowledge, ramifying 

 in all directions, illustrating and receiving light from so many other 

 sciences, appears often to overleap itself and give a looseness and in- 

 definiteness to the aims of the individual or the institution proposing 

 to cultivate it. 



The old term ethnology has a far more limited and definite mean- 

 ing. It is the study of the different peoples or races who compose 

 the varied population of the world, including their physical charac- 

 ters, their intellectual and moral development, their languages, social 

 customs, opinions, and beliefs ; their origin, history, migrations, and 

 present geographical distribution, and their relations to each other. 

 These subjects may be treated of under two aspects : first, by a con- 

 sideration of the general laws by which the modifications in all these 

 characters are determined and regulated — this is called general eth- 

 nology ; secondly, by the study and description of the races them- 

 selves, as distinguished from each other by the special manifestations 

 of these characters in them. To this the term special ethnology, or, 

 more often, ethnography, is applied. 



Ethnology thus treats of the resemblances and differences of the 

 modifications of the human species in their relations to each other, but 

 anthropology, as now understood, has a far wider scope. It treats of 



* From the President's address, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Anthro- 

 pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, January 22, 1884. 



