August i8, 189.2] 



NATURE 



79 



'the evidence as to the earliest traces of humanity, concluded his 

 •survey with the judgment, " On the whole, therefore, it appears 

 to me that the present verdict as to tertiary man must be in the 

 form of 'Not Proven.'" Subsequent research has not con- 

 tributed any new facts which lead us to modify that finding. 

 The_most remarkable of the recent discoveries under this head 

 is that of the rude implements of the Kentish chaik-plateau de- 

 scribed by Professor Prestwich ; but while these are evidently of 

 archaic types, it must be admitted that there is even yet room 

 for difference of opinion as to their exact geological age. 



Neither has the past year's record shed new light on the dark- 

 ness which enshrouds the origin of man. What the future may 

 have in store for us in the way of discovery we cannot forecast ; 

 at present we have nothing but hypothesis, and we must still 

 wait for further knowledge with the calmness of philosophic 

 expectancy. 



I may, however, in this connection refer to the singularly in- 

 teresting observations of Dr. Louis Robinson on the prehensile 

 power of the hands of children at birth, and to the graphic 

 pictures with which he has illustrated his paper. Dr. Robinson 

 has drawn, from the study of the one end of life, the same 

 conclusion which Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson deduced from 

 the study of his grandfather, that there still survive in the 

 human structure and habit traces of our probably arboreal 

 ancestry. 



Turning from these unsolved riddles of the past to the survey 

 of mankind as it appears to us in the present, we are con- 

 fronted in that wide range of outlook with many problems well 

 nigh as difficult and obscure. 



-Mankind, whenever and however it may have originated, 

 appears to us at present as an assemblage of tribes, each not 

 necessarily homogeneous, as their component elements may be 

 derived from diverse genealogical lines of descent. It is much 

 to be regretted that there is not in our literature a more definite 

 nomenclature for these divisions of mankind, and that such 

 words as 7-ace, people, nationality, tribe, and type are often used 

 indiscriminately as though they were synonyms. 



In the great mass of knowledge with which we deal there are 

 ■several collateral series of facts, the terminologies of which 

 should be discriminated. In the first place there are those 

 ethnic conditions existing now, or at any other point in time, 

 whereby the individuals of mankind are grouped into categories 

 of different comprehension, as clatis or families, as tribes or 

 groups of allied clans, and as nations, the inhabitants of re- 

 stricted areas under one political organization. This side of our 

 subject constitutes Ethnology. 



In the second place, the individuals of mankind may be re- 

 garded as the descendants of a limited number of original 

 parents, and consequently each person has his place on the 

 genealogical tree of humanity. As the successive branches 

 became in their dispersion subjected to the influences of diverse 

 environments, they have eventually differentiated in character- 

 istics. To each of these subdivisions of the phylum thus differ- 

 entiated the name race may appropriately be restricted, and the 

 sum of the peculiarities of each race may be termed race- 

 (■'la-racters. This is the phylogenetic side of Anthropology, and 

 its nomenclature should be kept clearly separate from that of 

 tlie ethnological side. The great and growing literature of An- 

 thropology consists largely of the records of attempts to discover 

 and formulate these distinctive race-characters. Race and tribe 

 may be terms of equal extension, but the standpoint from which 

 these categories are viewed is essentially different in the two cases. 

 There is yet a third series of names in common use in Des- 

 criptive Anthropology. The languages in use among men are 

 unfortunately numerous, and as the component individuals in 

 each community usually speak a common language, the mistake 

 is often made of confounding the tribal name with that of the 

 tribal language. Sometimes these categories are co-extensive ; 

 but it is not always so, for it is a matter of history that com- 

 munities have been led to adopt new languages from considera- 

 tions quite independent of phylogenetic or ethnic conditions. 

 These linguistic terms should not be confounded with the names 

 in either of the other series, for, as my learned predecessor once 

 said in a presidential address, it is as absurd to speak of an Aryan 

 skull as it would be to say that a family spoke a brachycephalic 

 language. 



In the one clan there may be, by intermarriage, the represen- 

 tatives of different races ; in the one nation there may be dis- 

 similar tribes, each derived by composite lines of ancestry from 

 divergent phyla, yet all speaking the same language. 



We have an excellent illustration of the confusion resulting 

 from this disregard of precision in the case of the word Celtic, a 

 term which has sometimes been employed as an ethnic, some- 

 times as a phylogenetic, and sometimes as a linguistic species. 

 In the last-named sense, that to which I believe the use of the 

 name should be restricted, it is the appropriate designation of a 

 group of cognate languages spoken Ijy peoples whose physical 

 characters show that they are not the descendants of one 

 common phylum in the near past. There are fair-haired, long- 

 headed families in Scotland and Ireland ; fair, broad-headed 

 Bretons ; dark-haired, round-headed Welshmen ; and dark- 

 haired, long-headed people in the outer Hebrides, McLeans, 

 " Sancho Panza type " — men obviously of different races, who 

 differ not only in colour, stature, and skull-form, but whose 

 traditions also point to a composite descent, and yet all 

 originally speaking a Celtic tongue. The use of the word 

 Celtic as if it were the name of a phylogenetic species has 

 naturally led to hopeless confusion in the attempts to formulate 

 race-characters for the Celtic skull — confusions of a kind 

 which tend to bring physical anthropology into discredit. 

 Thus Retzius characterizes the Celtic crania as being 

 dolichocephalic, and compares them with those of the 

 modern Scandinavians. Sir Daniel Wilson considers the true 

 Celtic type of skull as intermediate between the dolichocephalic 

 and the brachycephali ; and Topinard figures as the typical 

 Celtic skull that of an Auvergnat, extremely brachycephalic, 

 with an index of 85 ! 



Our traditional history tells that we, the Celtic-speaking races 

 of Britain, are not of one common ancestry, but are the 

 descendants of two distinct series of immigrants, a British and 

 a Gaelic. Whatever may have been the origin of the former, 

 we know that the latter are not homogeneous, but are the 

 mixed descendants of the several Fomorian, Nemedian, Firbolg, 

 Tuatha de Danaan, and Milesian immigrations, with which 

 has been combined in later times a strong admixture of Scan- 

 dinavian blood. It is now scarcely possible to ascertain to 

 which of these component strains in our ancestry we owe the 

 Celtic tongue which overmastered and supplanted the languages 

 of the other tribes, but it is strictly in accordance with what we 

 know of the history of mankind that this change should have 

 taken place. We have instances in modern times of the adop- 

 tion by conquered tribes of the language of a dominant invading 

 people. For example, Mr. Hale has lately told us that the 

 speech of the Hupas has superseded the languages of those 

 Californian Indians whom they have subdued. In like manner, 

 nearer home, the English language is slowly but surely sud- 

 planting the Celtic tongues themselves. 



We may here parenthetically note that what has been ob- 

 served in the case of language has also taken place in reference 

 to ritual and custom. Observances which have a history and a 

 meaning for one race have, in not a few instances, been adopted 

 by or imposed upon other races to whom they have no such 

 significance, and who in incorporating them give to them a new 

 local colour. These pseudomorphs of the earlier cultures are 

 among the most perplexing of the problems which the student 

 of comparative religion or folk-lore has to resolve. 



But we want more than a perfect nomenclature to bring An- 

 thropology into range with the true sciences. We need a 

 broader basis of ascertained fact for inductive reasoning in 

 almost all parts of our subject ; we want men trained in exact 

 method who will work patiently at the accumulation, verification, 

 and sorting of facts, and who will not prematurely rush into 

 theory. We have had enough of the untrained writer of papers, 

 the jerry-builder of unfounded hypotheses whose ruins cumber 

 our field of work. 



The present position of our subject is critical and peculiar ; 

 while on the one hand the facilities for anthropological research 

 are daily growing greater, yet in some directions the material is 

 diminishing in quantity and accessibility. We are accumulating 

 in our museums treasures both of the structure and the works of 

 man, classified according to his distribution in time and space ; 

 but at the same time some of the most interesting tribes have 

 vanished, and others are rapidly disappearing or becoming fused 

 with their neighbours. As these pass out of existence we, with 

 them, have lost their thoughts, their tongues, and their traditions; 

 for even when they survive, blended with other races, that which 

 was a religion has become a fragmentary superstition, then a 

 nursery tale or a child's game, and is destined finally to be 

 buried in oblivion. The unifying influences of commerce, aided 

 by steam and electricity, are effectually effacing the landmarks 



NO. I 1 90, VOL. 46] 



