246 ANTHROPOLOGY xvi 



occupied the attention of anatomists and anthropologists, and 

 we are still far from any general agreement. Every country, 

 every school, has its own system, so different that comparison 

 with one another is well-nigh impossible. This is undoubtedly 

 an evil ; but the question is whether we should all agree to 

 adopt one of the confessedly defective systems now in vogue, 

 or whether we should not rather continue to hope for, and 

 endeavour to find, one which may not be subject to the well- 

 known objections urged against all. 



We want, especially in this country, more workers trained 

 and experienced men, who will take up the subject seriously, 

 and devote themselves to it continuously. Of such we may 

 say, without offence to those few who have done occasional 

 excellent work in physical anthropology, but whose chief 

 scientific activity lies in other fields, we have not one. In 

 the last number of the French Revue d'Anthropologie, a 

 reference caught my eye to a craniometrical method in use by 

 the " Engish school " of anthropologists. It was a reference 

 only to a method which I had ventured to suggest, but which, 

 as far as I know, has not been adopted by any one else. A 

 school is just what we have not, and what we want a body of 

 men, not only willing to learn, but able to discuss, to criticise, 

 to give their approval to, or reduce to its proper level, the 

 results put forth by our few original investigators and writers. 

 The rapidity with which any one of the most slender pretensions 

 who ventures into the field (I speak from painful experience) 

 is raised to be an oracle among his fellows is one of the most 

 alarming proofs of the present barrenness of the land. 



Another most urgent need is the collection and preserva- 

 tion of the evidences of the physical structure of the various 

 modifications of man upon the earth. Especially urgent is 

 this now, as we live in an age in which, in a far greater 

 degree than any previous one, the destruction of races, both 

 by annihilation and absorption, is going on. The world has 

 never witnessed such changes in its ethnology as those now 

 taking place, owing to the rapid extension of maritime 

 discovery and maritime commerce, which is especially affecting 

 the island population among which, more than elsewhere, the 

 solution of the most important anthropological problems may 



