884 EEPORT— 1900. 



Section H,— ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 Pbesident of the Seciioit— Professor John Khxs, M,A., LL.D. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 

 The President delivered the following Address: — 



Perhaps I ought to begin by apologising for my conspicuous lack of qualifica- 

 tion to fill this cliair, but I prefer, with your permission, to dismiss that as a 

 subject far too large for me to dispose of this morning. So I would beg to call 

 your attention back for a moment to the excellent address given to this Section 

 last year. It was full of practical suggestions which are well worth recalling : one 

 was as to the project of a Bureau of Ethnology for Greater Britain, and the other 

 turned on the desirability of founding an Imperial Institution to represent our vast 

 Colonial Empire. I mention these things in the hope that we shall not leave the 

 Government and others concerned any peace till we have realised those modest 

 dreams of enlightenment. People's minds are just now so full of other things that 

 the interests of knowledge and science are in no little danger of being overlooked. 

 So it is all the more desirable that the British Association, as our great parliament 

 of science, should take the necessary steps to prevent that happening, and to keep 

 steadily before the public the duties which a great and composite nation like ours 

 owes to the world and to humanity, whether civilised or savage. 



The difficulties of the position of the president of this Section arise in a great 

 measure from the vastness of the field of research which the Science of Man covers. 

 He is, therefore, constrained to limit his attention as a rule to some small corner 

 of it ; and, with the audacity of ignorance, I have selected that which might be 

 labelled the early ethnology of the British Isles, but I propose to approach it only 

 along the precarious paths of folklore and philology, because I know no other. 

 Here, however, comes a personal difficulty: at any rate I suppose I ought to 

 pretend that I feel it a difficulty, namely, that 1 have committed myself to 

 publicity on that subject already. But as a matter of fact, 1 can hardly bring 

 myself to confess to any such feeling ; and this leads me to mention in passing 

 the change of attitude which I have lived to notice in the case of students in my 

 position. Most of us here present have known men who, when they had 

 once printed their views on their favourite subjects of study, stuck to those views 

 through thick and thin, or at most limited themselves to changing the place of a 

 comma here and there, or replacing an occasional and by a but. The work had then 

 been made perfect, and not a few great questions afiecting no inconsiderable portions 

 of the universe had been for ever set at rest. That was briefly the process of 

 getting ready for posterity, but one of its disadvantages was that those who 

 adopted it had to waste a good deal of time in the daily practice of the art of 

 fencing and winning verbal victories ; for, metaphorically speaking, 



' With many a whack and many a bang 

 Eough cvabtree and old iron ranf;;. 



