September 7, 1905] 



NATURE 



471 



■crop proposed to be watered in the following year. If 

 the water is available the direction-general allots to each 

 parish the number of modules necessary for this irriga- 

 tion ; but it may quite well happen that the parish may 

 demand more than can be supplied, and may have to 

 substitute a crop like wheat, requiring little water, for 

 j*ice, which requires a great deal. 



The Government executes and pays for all repairs on 

 t-he main canals. It further executes, at the cost of the 

 Irrigation Association, all repairs on the minor canals. 

 The association, then, has no engineers in its employ, but 

 a large staff of irrigators. The irrigation module 

 employed in Piedmont is supposed to deliver 2-047 cubic 

 feet per second. The Association West of the Sesia buys 

 from the Government what water it requires at a rate 

 fixed at 800 liras per module, or 15!. 125. yd. per cubic 

 foot per second per annum. 



The association distributes the water by module to each 

 district, and the district by module to each parish. Inside 

 the parish each farmer pays, according to the area he 

 waters, a sum to cover all the cost of the maintenance 

 of the irrigation system, and his share of the sum which 

 the association has to pay to the Government. This sum 

 varies from year to year according as the working expenses 

 •of the year increase or diminish. 



I have already mentioned the recently constructed 

 Villoresi Canal in Lombardy. This canal belongs to a 

 company, to whom the Government has given large 

 ■concessions. This company sells its water wholesale to 

 four districts, each having its own secondary canal, the 

 cubic metre per second, or 35-31 cubic feet per second, 

 being the unit employed. These districts, again, retail 

 the water to groups of farmers termed comizios, whose 

 lands are watered by the same distributary channels, their 

 unit being the litre, or 0035 cubic foot, per second. Within 

 'the comizio the farmer pays according to the number of 

 hours per week that he has had the full discharge of the 

 module. 



I have thought it worth while to describe at some 

 length the systems employed on these Italian canals, for 

 the Italian farmers set a very high example, in the loyal 

 wav in which they submit to regulations which there 

 must at times be a great temptation to break. A sluice 

 surreptitiously opened during a dark night, and allowed 

 to run for six hours, may quite possibly double the value 

 ■of the crop which it waters. It is not an easy matter to 

 distribute water fairly and justly between a number of 

 farms at different levels, dependent on different water- 

 courses, cultivating different crops. But in Piedmont this 

 is done with such success that an appeal from the council 

 of arbitration to the ordinary law courts is unheard of. 

 It is thought apparently as discreditable to appropriate 

 an unfair supply of water as to steal a neighbour's horse, 

 as discreditable to tamper with the lock of the water 

 module as with the lock of a neighbour's barn. 



Mr. Schuyler's Views as to Government Control. 



Where such a high spirit of honour prevails I do not 

 ■see why syndicates of farmers should not construct and 

 maintain a good system of irrigation. Nevertheless, I 

 believe it is better that Government should take the 

 initiative in laying out and constructing the canals and 

 secondary channels at least. A recent American author, 

 Mr. James Dix Schuyler, has put on record : " That 

 storage reservoirs are a necessary and indispensable 

 adjunct to irrigation development, as well as to the 

 utilisation of power, requires no argument to prove. 

 That they will become more and more necessary to our 

 Western civilisation is equally sure and certain ; but the 

 signs of the times seem to point to the inevitable necessity 

 of Governmental control in their construction, ownership, 

 and administration." 



This opinion should not be disregarded. Sir W. Will- 

 cocks has truly remarked : "If private enterprise cannot 

 succeed in irrigation works of magnitude in America, it 

 will surely not succeed in any other country in this world." 

 What its chances may be in South Africa I leave to my 

 hearers to say. It is not a subject on which a stranger 

 • can form an opinion. 



NO '871, VOL. 72] 



SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening Address by A. C. Haddon, Sc.D., F.R.S., 



President of the Section. 



There are various ways in which man can study him- 

 self, and it is clearly impossible for me to attempt to give 

 an exposition of all the aims and methods of the anthro- 

 pological sciences ; I propose, therefore, to limit myself to 

 a general view of South African ethnology, incidentally 

 referring to a few of the problems that strike a European 

 observer as needing further elucidation. It seems some- 

 what presumptuous in one who is now for the first time 

 visiting this continent to venture to address a South African 

 audience on local ethnology, but I share this disability 

 with practically all students of anthropology at home, and 

 my excuse lies in the desire that I may be able to point 

 out to you some of the directions in which the information 

 of anthropologists is deficient, with the hope that this 

 may be remedied in the immediate future. 



Men are naturally apt to take an exclusive interest in 

 their immediate concerns, and even anthropologists are 

 liable to fall into the danger of studying men's thoughts 

 and deeds bv themselves, without taking sufficient account 

 of the outside influences that affect mankind. 



In the sister science of zoology, it is possible to study 

 animals as machines which are either at rest or in motion : 

 when they are thus studied individually, the subjects are 

 termed anatomy and physiology ; when they are studied 

 comparatively, they are knovi^n as comparative anatomy 

 or morphology and comparative physiology. The study of 

 the genesis of the macliine is embryology, and palceonto- 

 logists, as it were, turn over the scrap-heap. All these 

 sciences can deal with animals irrespective of their environ- 

 ment, and perhaps for intensive study such a limitation is 

 temporarily desirable, but during the period of greatest 

 specialisation there have always been some who have 

 followed in the footsteps of the field naturalist, and to-day 

 we are witnessing a combination of the two lines of study. 



Biology has ceased to be a mixture of necrology and 

 physiology ; it seeks to obtain a survey of all the con- 

 ditions of e-xistence, and to trace the effects of the environ- 

 ment on the organism, of the organism on the environ- 

 ment, and of organism upon organism. Much detailed 

 work will always be necessary, and we shall never be able 

 to do without isolated laboratory work ; but the day is 

 past when the amassing of detailed information will satisfy 

 the demands of science. The leaders, at all events, will 

 view the subject as a whole, and so direct individual 

 labour that the hewers of wood and drawers of water, as 

 it were, shall not mechanically amass material of which 

 no immediate use can be made, but they will be so directed 

 that all their energies can be exercised in solving definite 

 problems or in filling up gaps in our information, with 

 knowledge which is of real importance. 



This tendency, which I have indicated as affecting the 

 science of zoology, is merely one phase of an attitude of 

 mind that is influencing many departments of thought. 

 There are psychologists and theologians who deem it worth 

 while to find out what other people think and believe. 

 Arm-chair philosophers are awakening to the fact that 

 their studies have hitherto been confined almost exclusively 

 to the most highly specialised conditions, and that in order 

 to comprehend these fully it is necessary to study the less 

 and the yet less specialised conditions ; for it is only 

 possible to gain the true history of mind or belief by a 

 combination of the observational with the comparative 

 method. A considerable amount of information has already 

 been acquired, but in most departments of human thought 

 and belief vastly more information is needed, and hitherto 

 the trustworthiness of a great deal that has been published 

 is not above suspicion. 



The comparative or evolutionary historian also needs 

 trustworthy facts concerning the social condition of varied 

 peoples in all stages of culture. The documentary records 

 of history are too imperfect to enable the whole story to 

 be unravelled, so recourse must be had to a study of 

 analogous conditions elsewhere for side-lights which will 

 cast illuminating beams into the dark corners of ancient 

 history. When the historian seriously turns his attention 



