252 ANTHROPOLOGY xvn 



logical Society " (three years, therefore, before the Ethnological 

 sub-Section of Section D of this Association). It did excellent 

 work for many years under that title, but partly from personal 

 considerations, and partly from a desire to undertake a wider 

 and somewhat different field of research, another and in some 

 senses a rival society, which adopted the name of " Anthropo- 

 logical," was founded in 1863. For some years these existed 

 side by side, each representing in its most active supporters 

 different schools of the science. This arrangement naturally 

 involved a waste of strength, and it was felt that the interests 

 of the subject would be promoted by an amalgamation of the 

 two societies. Many difficulties, chiefly, as is usual in such 

 cases, of a personal nature, had to be overcome, one of the 

 principal being the selection of a name for the united society. 

 It was generally felt that " Anthropological " would be most 

 appropriate, but the members of the old Ethnological Society 

 could not bring themselves absolutely to sink the fact of their 

 priority of existence, and all that they had done for science for 

 so many years, by merging their society into that of their 

 younger and active rivals ; so after much discussion a com- 

 promise was effected, and the new organisation which arose 

 from the coalescence of the two societies adopted the rather 

 cumbrous title of Anthropological Institute, of Great Britain 

 and Ireland. This was in 1871, and since that period the 

 Society, as it is to all intents and purposes both in structure and 

 function, has pursued a peaceful and useful course of existence, 

 holding meetings at stated periods throughout the session, at 

 which papers are read, and subjects of interest to anthro- 

 pologists exhibited and discussed. It has also published a 

 quarterly journal, which has been the principal means in this 

 country of communicating new information upon such subjects. 

 The Institute has for twenty -three years performed this 

 duty in a business-like and unostentatious manner, the only 

 remarkable circumstance connected with its history being the 

 singular want of interest taken by the outside world in its 

 proceedings, considering their intrinsic importance to society, 

 especially in an empire like ours, which more than any other 

 affords a field for the study of man, under almost every aspect 

 of diversity of race, climate, and culture. At the present time 



