May 22, 1902] 
NATURE 
gI 
of the great scientific societies, the Lincei, the Paris Academy 
and the Royal Society, were the organs and the witnesses. 
We find in the life of Bruno a vivid narrative of the 
Oxford of the sixteenth century. Bruno visited Oxford 
in June, 1583, with the French Ambassador Castelnau, the 
translator of Ramus. Of the disputations in the schools, of 
their pompous frivolity, he gives a very amusing description. 
The earth, said Aristotle, Paris and Oxford, is motionless ; 
the universe is finite and moves. Bruno, in the name of 
Philolaus and Copernicus, protested that the earth revolves and 
that the universe is infinite ; and the dispute grew venomous. 
Bruno asked and was granted permission to teach in Oxford ; 
but as dormzttantium animorum excubitor he seems to have 
been even less successful in combating the physics of Aristotle 
than was Ramus in respect of his dialectic and Luther of his 
ethics. 
Orthodoxy is the defensive weapon of society rather than of 
religion ; when the needs of the two came into conflict it was 
religion which went tc the wall. Happily ‘‘ certain extravagant 
chemists,” of whom more anon—and the Ramists, Paracelsians 
and Italian philosophers, were shrewdly assisted by new factors 
- in the worlds of polite society and letters. As Petrarch and 
Boccaccio disarmed the academic coxcombs of Padua, now 
again in France the sceptical bonhomie of Montaigne, the 
revolutionary philosophy of Charron, the merciless raillery of 
the Mariage Force and the polished satire of Boileau did 
more to penetrate the ‘armour of the Church than the hardier 
rebels to bruise it. By them the shabby Aristolelian effigy, 
battered by the weapons of Roger Bacon, of Galileo, of 
Harvey, of Telesio and Descartes, and bedaubed with the 
missiles of Patrizzi, of Ramus and of Verulam, was finally broken 
up and demolished. In the middle of the seventeenth century 
at Wadham, Warden Wilkins gathered about him a constellation 
of scientific men such as has perhaps never gathered together 
in any other time or place. Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren, 
John Locke, Robert Hooke, and, but little latter, John Mayow, 
all of them men of genius, were at the head of a society which 
was the foundation of the Royal Society, and among its lesser 
lights contained names no less than those of Seth Ward, John 
Wallis, Thomas Willis, Roger Lower and William Petty. The 
lecture concluded with a study of Boyle, not only as a scientific 
discoverer, but also as a philosopher and a reformer of method 
of far greater insight than Dr. Whewell admits, and, moreover, 
aman of charming temperament and an accomplished man of 
letters. 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCHES IN 
INDIA} 
IEUT.-COLONEL DR. WADDELL has been constrained 
to make a careful study of the savage tribes that live in the 
mountainous valleys of the upper waters of the Brahmaputra, as 
he realised that the unique mass of ethnological material which 
is stored in these mountain recesses is being allowed to dis- 
appear unrecorded. It is said to be no uncommon sight to see 
a Naga, who only two or three years ago was a naked head- 
hunting savage of the most pronounced type, now clad in a 
tweed coat and carrying a Manchester umbrella, taking his ticket 
at a railway station. Dr. Waddell states that one of the oldest 
European residents of Assam, Mr. S. E. Peal, urged at every 
opportunity in the public Press and in communications to the 
Asiatic Societies, the Royal Geographical Society and the 
Anthropological Institute of London, in the strongest terms 
possible, the necessity for action without further delay. In 
despair at the apathy displayed in the matter, he willed away at 
his death, a few months ago, to a museum in New Zealand all 
his collections of miscellaneous notes and specimens -of the 
vanishing ornaments and primitive costumes of these wild 
tribes. Colonel Woodthorpe has emphasised the loss to ethnology 
if the many interesting tribes are not carefully studied soon. Mr. 
Wharry, adviser on Chinese affairs to the Government at Burma, 
says :—‘‘ The chance of studying these peoples to full advantage 
is fast slipping away.” 
The observations published by Dr. Waddell relate to about 
1 “he Tribes of the Brahmaputra Valley: a Contribution on their 
Physical Types and Affinities.” By L. A. Waddell, M.B., LL.D., Lieut. 
Colonel, Indian Medical Service. (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 
vol. 1xix., part ili. 1900 (1901) pp. 1-127. pls. ii-xviii.) 
““The Coorgs and Yeruvas, an Ethnological Contrast.” By T. H. 
Holland, A.R.C.S., F.G.S., Geological Survey of India. (/éid, vol. Ixx. 
Part iil. 1901, pp. 59-98, pls. i-v.). 
NO. 1699, VOL. 66] 
600 individuals belonging to more than thirty tribes or groups. 
After briefly describing the influence of topography on the 
ethnology of the district and the racial elements, he gives a short 
account of a large number of tribes in alphabetical order. This 
section contains a great deal of very interesting matter which is 
of value alike to the ethnologist and to the student of compara- 
tive customs. Then follows the detailed anthropometric data 
and seventeen plates of portraits and groups. As the tables of 
indices and the ‘‘ comparison of the results and the bearing of 
these on the question of the affinities of the tribes” are not given 
in this part, we assume they will follow in the next number of 
the journal, when it is to be hoped the equally bulky data for 
the tribes of Tibet and Burma, which the author has amassed, 
will be published for the benefit of his colleagues at home. 
The laborious work accomplished single-handed and mainly 
at his own expense by Colonel Waddell deserves our warmest 
thanks, and we hope he will feel that anthropologists thoroughly 
appreciate his self-denying labours. It is quite beyond the 
power of the few students at home to help in supporting, save 
by encouragement, such workers as Colonel Waddell. To our 
shame be it spoken, there is no organisation by which the wealth 
of those who have abundance can be directed towards the 
pressing needs of field-work among primitive peoples, such as 
is so pathetically advocated by the author of this paper, and our 
Government also is apathetic to the study of native races ; one 
can only hope that this negligence is due to ignorance. 
Since Colonel Waddell wrote his paper, the Government of 
India has undertaken to conduct an Ethnographic Survey of 
India in connection with the census of 1901. This action was 
due to the initiative of the British Association at the Dover 
meeting in 1899; particulars of the proposed scheme of work 
will be found in Zaz, September 1901, p. 137. As Mr. Risley, 
the author of ‘‘ The Tribes and Castes of Bengal,” has been 
appointed Director of Ethnography for India, we may feel sure 
that the Survey will be wisely planned, and we sincerely hope 
that sufficiently skilled workers are employed and that the use- 
fulness of the Survey will not be impeded through lack of 
funds. While we are thankful for this official recognition of 
the claims of anthropology, it is still necessary to repeat, 
what has so often been urged in the pages of NaTuRE, that 
there is an enormous mass of ethnological material in our 
Empire beyond the seas which is yearly decreasing at an alarm- 
ing rate, or is rapidly becoming so modified as to lose its original 
value. The loss of this vanishing anthropological information 
is supinely permitted by our Government. What a contrast 
there is between the British Government and that of the United 
States is known only too well by those acquainted with the 
annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology. 
Mr. T. H. Holland, of the Geological Survey of India, has 
published a very valuable study on two well-contrastéd human 
types found in a small district of southern India. The presen- 
tation of the data, their discussion, the comparative tables, 
diagrams and plates, render this a model paper. 
In the little province of Coorg, which embraces a semi-isolated 
portion of the western Ghats, there is an interesting instance of 
the way in which a mountainous and jungle-covered country has 
been turned to totally different purposes by two distinct races. 
The agricultural Yeruva early retreated into the little mountain 
province before the aggressive invaders. Ata later period the 
splendid Kodagas (Coorgs) found in the jungles of Coorg the 
means of satisfying their hunting propensities, whilst the narrow 
passes suited their highly developed instincts for predatory raids 
into the country of their wealthier but less warlike neighbours. 
The sporting and fighting proclivities of the Coorgs reveal 
themselves even in their festive and religious ceremonies. From 
his very birth, when a miniature bow and arrow made from the’ 
castor oil plant is placed in the hands of the baby boy, the 
Coorg male is, or was, regarded as a huntsman and a warrior 
whose pride was in his size and strength ; hence this is the finest 
race in the south of India. 
A comparison of the physical characters of these two tribes 
proves that the Coorg is on an average 3°9 inches taller than the 
Yeruva, and witha relatively shorter span he has a larger and 
broader head, a more perfect approach to orthognathism, his nose 
is longer and narrower. There is a marked contrast between the 
fair (light brown), straight-haired Coorg and the very dark- 
skinned Yeruva, whose hair is distinctly wavy. The features of 
the latter are generally of the stamp which we should characterise 
as distinctly low, the broad nose being accompanied by thick, 
slightly everted lips. 
