?>7^ 



NA TURE 



[August i8, 1892 



These transverse folds of different grades, which affect 

 different layers of the earth-crust differentially, account also for 

 the formation of laccolites, of granitic cores, and of petrological 

 provinces ; and they enable us also to understand many of the 

 phenomena of metamorphism. 



Of the folds of the third order I shall here say nothing ; but 

 I must frankly admit that the primal cause of all this tangential 

 movement and folding stress is still as mysterious to me as ever. 

 I incline to think that it is due to many causes— tidal action, 

 sedimentation, and many others. I cannot deny, however, that 

 it may be mainly the result of the contraction in diameter of 

 our earth, due to the loss of its original heat into outer space ? 

 For everywhere we find evidences of symmetrical crushing of 

 the earth-crust by tangential stresses. Everywhere we find 

 proofs that different layers of that crust have been affected 

 differentially, and the outer layers have been folded the most. 

 We seem to be dealing not so much with a solid globe as with a 

 globular shell composed of many layers. 



Is it not just possible after all that, as others have suggested, 

 our earth is such a hollow shell, or series of concentric shells, 

 on the surface of which gravity is at a maximum, and in whose 

 deepest interior it is non-existent? May this not be so also in 

 the case of the sun, through whose spot-eddies we possibly look 

 into a hollow interior? If so, perhaps our present nebulse may 

 also be hollow shells formed of meteorites ; on the surfaces of 

 these shells the fiery spirals we see would be the swirls which 

 answer to the many twisting crustal septa of the earth. Our 

 comets, too, in this case might be elongated ellipsoids, whose 

 visible parts would be merely interference phenomena or sheets 

 of differential movement. 



In this case we have represented before us to-day all the past 

 of our earth as well as its present. Uniformity and evolution 

 are one. 



Thus from the microscopic septa of the laminse of the geolo- 

 gical formations we pass outwards in fact to these moving septa 

 of our globe, marked on land by our new mountain-chains, and 

 on our shores by our active volcanoes. Thence we sweep, in 

 imagination, to the fiery eddies of the sun, and thence to the 

 glowing swirls of the nebula; ; and so outwards and upwards to 

 that most glorious septum of all the visible creation, the radiant 

 ring of the Milky Way. 



Prof George Darwin, in his address to the section of 

 mathematical and physical science at the meeting of the British 

 Association at Birmingham in 1886, with all the courage of 

 genius, and the authority of one of the sons of the prophets, 

 acknowledged that it seems as likely that "meteorology and 

 geology will pass the word of command to cosmical physics as 

 the converse." Behind this generous admission I shelter 

 myself. But I feel absolutely confident that long after the 

 physicists may have swept away these provisional astronomical 

 suggestions as "the baseless fabric of a vision," there will still 

 remain in the treasure-house of the geological fold a wealth of 

 abundant material for the use of the mathematician, the physi- 

 cist, the chemist, the mineralogist, and the astronomer, of the 

 deepest interest and of the highest value. 



SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Alexander Macalister, M.D., 

 F.R.S., Professor of Anatomy in the University 

 OF Cambridge, President of the Section. 



On an irregular and unfenced patch of waste land, situated on 

 the outskirts of a small town in which I spent part of my boy- 

 hood, there stood a notice board bearing the inscription, "A 

 Free Coup," which, when translated into the language of the 

 Southron, conveyed the intimation, " Rubbish may be shot 

 here." This place, with its ragged mounds of unconsidered 

 trifles, the refuse of the surrounding households, was the favourite 

 playground of the children of the neighbourhood, who found a 

 treasury of toys in the broken tiles and oyster-shells, the crockery 

 and cabbage-stalks, which were liberally scattered around. 

 Many a make-believe house and road, and even village, was con- 

 structed by these mimic builders out of this varied material, 

 which their busy little feet had trodden down until its undulated 

 surface assumed a fairly coherent consistence. 



Passing by this place ten years later I found that its aspect 



NO. II 90, VOL. 4.6] 



had changed ; terraces of small houses had sprung up, mush- 

 room-like, on the unsavoury foundation of heterogeneous refuse. 

 Still more recently I notice that these in their turn have been 

 swept away, and now a large factory, wherein some of the most 

 ingenious productions of human skill are constructed, occupies- 

 the site of the original waste. 



This commonplace history is, in a sense, a parable in which 

 is set forth the past, present, and possible future of that accu- 

 mulation of lore in reference to humanity to which is given the 

 name Anthropology, and for the study of which this Section of 

 our Association is set apart. At first nothing better than a 

 heap of heterogeneous facts and fancies, the leavings of the his- 

 torian, of the adventurer, of the missionary, it has been for long, 

 and alas is still, the favourite playground of dilettanti of various 

 degrees of seriousness. But upon this foundation there is rapidly 

 rising a more comely superstructure, fairer to see than the original 

 chaos, but still bearing marks of transitoriness and imperfection, 

 and I dare hazard the prediction that this is destined in the 

 course of time to give place to the more solid fabric of a real 

 Science of Anthropology. 



We cannot yet claim that our subject is a real science in the 

 sense in which that name is applied to those branches of know- 

 ledge, founded upon ascertained laws, which form the subjects 

 of most of our sister Sections ; but we can justify our separate 

 existence, in that we are honestly endeavouring to lay a definite 

 and stable foundation, upon which in lime to come a scientific 

 Anthropology may be based. 



The materials with which we have to do are fully as varied as 

 were those in my illustration, for we as anthropologists take for 

 our niotio the sentiment of Chremes, so often quoted in this 

 Section, htanani nihil a nobis alienum putamus, and they are too 

 often fully as fragmentary. The bones, weapons, and pottery 

 which form our only sources of knowledge concerning pre- 

 historic races of men, generally come to us as much altered 

 from their original forms as are the rusty polyhedra 

 which once were the receptacles for biscuits or sardines. 

 The traditions, customs, and scraps of folk-lore which are 

 treasuies to the constructive anthropologist, are usually 

 discovered as empty shells, in form as much altered from 

 their original conditions as are those smooth fragments of 

 hollow wfiite cylinders which once held the delicate products 

 of the factory of Keiller or Cairns. 



I have said that Anthropology has not yet made good its 

 title to be ranked as an independent science. This is indicated 

 by the difficulty of framing a definition at the same time com- 

 prehensive and distinctive. Mr. Gallon characterizes it as the 

 study of what men are in body and mind, how they came to be 

 what they are, and whither the race is tending; General Pitt- 

 Rivers, as the science which ascertains the true causes for all 

 the phenomena of human life, i shall not try to improve upon 

 these definitions, although they both are manifestly defective. 

 On the one side our subject is a branch of biology, but we are 

 more than biologists compiling a monograph on the natural 

 history of our species, as M. de Quatreiages would have it. 

 Many of the problems with which we deal are common to us- 

 and to psychologists ; others are common to us and to 

 students of history, of sociology, of philology, and of 

 religion ; and, in addition, we have to treat of a large number 

 of other matters aesthetic, artistic, and technical, which it is 

 difficult to range under any subordinate category. 



In view of the encyclopaedic range of knowledge necessary 

 for the equipment of an accomplished anthropologist, it is little 

 wonder that we should be, as we indeed are, little better than 

 smatterers. Its many-sided affinities, its want of definite 

 limitation, and the recent date of its admission to the position of 

 an independent branch of knowledge, have hitherto caused 

 Anthropology to fare badly in our Universities. In this respect,, 

 however, we are improving, and now in the two great English 

 Universities there are departments for the study of the natural 

 history of man and of his works. 



Out of the great assemblage of topics which come within our 

 sphere, I can only select a few which seem at present to demand 

 special consideration. The annual growth of our knowledge is 

 chiefly in matters of detail which are dull to chronicle, and the 

 past year has not been fertile in discoveries bearing on those 

 great questions which are of popular interest. 



On the subject of the antiquity of man there are no fresh 

 discoveries of serious importance to record. My esteemed pre- 

 decessor at the Leeds meeting two years ago, after reviewing 



