104 REPORT 1870. 



which came into my hauds a short time back; through the kindness of Lord Antrim > 

 after having done duty in these iron times as a charm at the bottom of a water-tub 

 for cattle in Irehmd, was pointed out or at to me by a very distinguished Canadian 

 naturalist, who was visiting Oxford the other day, as being closely similar to the 

 weapons manufactured by the Canadian Indians. Now after such an experience 

 one may do well to ask in Mr. Tyler's words (' Early History,' p. 206) : — 



" How, then, is this remarkable imiformity to be explained ? The principle that 

 man does the same thing imder the same circumstances will account for much, but 

 it is very doubtful whether it can be stretched far enough to account for even the 

 greater proportion of the facts in question. The other side of the argument is, of 

 course, that resemblance is due to connexion, and the truth is made up of the two, 

 though in what proportions we do not know. It may be that, though the problem 

 is too obscure to be worked out alone, the uniformity of development in difierent 

 regions of the Stone age may some day be successfully brought in with other lines 

 of argument, based on deep-lying agreements in culture which tend to centralize 

 the early history of races ot veiy unlike appearances, and living in widely distant 

 ages and countries." 



If the psychological identity of om' species may explain the identitj^ of certain 

 customs, its physiological identity may explain certain others. Some of this latter 

 class are of a curious kind, and relate not to matters of social or faniity, but to 

 matters of purely personal and individual interest, concerning as they do the sen- 

 sibility, and with it all the other functions of the living body. Such customs are 

 the wearing of labrets or lip-rings, nose-rings, and, if I may add itjwithout offence, 

 of certain other rings inserted in the wide region supplied by the fifth or trifacial 

 nerve *. A physiological explanation may lie at the base of these practices, which 

 appear to put at the disposal of the persons who adopt them a perennial means for 

 setting up an irritation, whence reflex consequences in the course of reflex nutrition 

 and reflex secretion, as of gastric juice, may flow. A curious book was written, or 

 at least published, on the subject of these practices, and others akin to them, in 

 1653, by Dr. John Bulwer, a benevolent doctor, who paid attention to the care of 

 the deaf and dumb previously, I think it is stated, to Dr. Wallis, and who conse- 

 quently, with proper pride, if this precedence really belongs to him, signs himself 

 "J. B. cognomento Chirosophus." The title of the book is " Anthropometamor- 

 phosis; Man Transformed, or the Artificial Changeling." I was made acquainted 

 with its existence by my friend Mr. Tomlinson, of Worcester College, from the li- 

 brary of which Society I procured a copy for consultation : the book is not rare I think, 

 but I think it is little known ; it contains nmch that is curious, and it is, inasmuch 

 as it was written more than 200 years ago, St oKTjparoj rju i'n Xeiixcov, from some, 

 though not from all points of view, the more valuable. It is, I apprehend, to some 

 of these customs, as well as to others, that Zimmermann (not the author of the work 

 on Solitude, but Zimmermann the zoologist) alludes in a rather amusing passage, 

 which may be found in the third volume of his lai'ger work on the Distribution of 

 Species and on Zoology (see p. 257). I speak of the passage as amusing ; it is 

 more than that, or I would not quote it ; indeed j^ou will not see that it is parti- 

 cularly amusing imless I tell you that \olumes ii. and iii. are of date 1783, and are 

 dedicated to his own father, whilst volume i., of date 1778, is dedicated to " Ilia 

 Most Serene Highness and Lord, Ferdinand Duke of Brunswick, my Most Gracious 

 Lord." Its quality of amusingness depends upon these dates, and the speculations 

 they set us to make as to how the Serene Duke, his " Most Gracious Lord," had 

 oftended the man of science in the interval between 1778 and 1783. It runs 

 thus: — "If you argue from similarity of customs and ceremonies to identity of 

 origin of two tribes under comparison, you must first show that these customs are 

 not such as would naturally tend to the amelioration of the conditions of the in- 

 habitants in the two countries under consideration, and would probably therefore, 

 or can naturally, suggest themselves to each of the races in question. Or there may 

 be customs founded on innate folly and stupidity, and thus, for j-our argument to 

 be valid, you must show that of two peoples widely separated, each cannot by any 

 chance come into its own country to adopt the like foolish and stupid customs. 

 For whilst two wise heads are to make out, each independently of the other and 

 * See ' Medicine in Modern Times,' p. 57. 



