584 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 1909 



Canada itsrlf could supply. Among the leading members 

 of this Ethnographic Survey Committee I need only men- 

 tion three — the late Dr. George Dawson, Mr. David Boyle, 

 and Mr. Benjamin Suite, each eminent already in his own 

 line of study, and all convinced of the great scientific value 

 of what was proposed. The first year's enterprise opened 

 well : workers were found in several districts of Canada ; 

 the Association sent out scientific instruments, and formed 

 in London a strong consultative committee to keep the 

 Canadian field-workers in touch with European students 

 of the subject. But the premature death of George 

 Dawson in 1901 broke the mainspring of the machine ; 

 the field-workers fell out of touch with one another and 

 with the subject ; the instruments were scattered, and in 

 1904 the Ethnographic Survey Committee was not re- 

 commended for renewal. 



1 need not say how great a disappointment this failure 

 has been to those of us who believe that in this depart- 

 ment of knowledge Canada has great contributions to 

 make, and who know — as this meeting too knows perfectly 

 well — that if this contribution to knowledge is not made 

 within the next ten years, it can never be made at all. 

 I am not speaking merely of the urgency of exact studv 

 of the Indian peoples. This indeed is obvious and urgent 

 enough ; and the magnificent results of organised effort in 

 the United States are there to show how much you too 

 can still rescue, if you \vill. But at the moment I appeal 

 rather for the s.ystematic study of your own European 

 immigrants, that stream of almost all known varieties of 

 white men with which you are drenching yearly fresh 

 regions of the earth's surface, which if they have had 

 experience of human settlements at all, have known man 

 only as a predatory migratory animal, more restless than 

 the bison, more feckless and destructive than the w-olf. 

 Of your immigrants' dealings with wild nature, you are 

 indeed keeping rough undesigned record in the documents 

 of your Land Surveys, and in the statistics of the spread 

 of agriculture over what once w-as forest or prairie ; and 

 in time to come, somethiiif; — though not, I fear, much — 

 will exist to show what good (and as likely as not, also, 

 what irremediable harm) this age of colonisation has done 

 to the region as a whole. But what you do not keep 

 record of is Nature's dealijigs with your immigrants; you 

 do not know — and so long as you omit to observe, vou 

 are condemned not to know — the answer to the simple all- 

 important question, What kinds of men do best in Canada? 

 What l;ind of men is Canada making out of the raw 

 material wkich Europe is feeding into God's Mills on this 

 side ? 



Over in England, we are only too well aware how poor 

 a lead we have given you. We, too, for a centurv now, 

 have been feeding into other great winnowing chambers 

 the raw crop of our villagers. We have created (to change 

 the metaphor), in our vast towns, great vats of fermenting 

 humanity, under conditions of life which at the best are 

 unprecedented, and at their worst almost unimaginable. 

 That is our great experiment in modern English anthro- 

 pology — What hafipens to Englishmen in City slums? and 

 we shall hear, before this meeting ends, soniething of the 

 methods by which we are attempting now to watch and 

 record the outcome of that experiment in the making of 

 the English of to-morrow. We are beginning to know", in 

 the first place, what types of human "animal can tolerate 

 and survive the stern conditions of modern urban life. 

 We are learning, still more slowly, what modes of life, 

 what modified structure of the family, of the dailv round, 

 of society at large, can offer the adjustment to new needs 

 of life, which human nature demands under this new, 

 almost unbearable strain. We are seeing, more clear in 

 the mass, even if hopelessly involved in detail, the same 

 process of selection going on in the mental furniture of 

 the individuals themselves ; new views of life, new beliefs, 

 new motives and modes of action ; new, if onlv in the 

 sense that they presuppose the destruction of the old. 



That is our problem in human society at home. And 

 yours, though it has a brighter side, is in its essentials 

 the same. Geographers can tell you something already of 

 the physical " control " which is the setting to all possible 

 societies on Canadian soil. Scientific study of the vanish- 

 ing remnants of the Redskin tribes m.ay show vou a little 

 of the effects of this control, long continued, upon nations 

 NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



whom old Heylin held to be " doubtless the offspring of 

 the Tartars." Sympathetic observation and friendly inter- 

 course may still fill some blanks in our knowledge of their 

 social state ; how hunting or fishing — or, in rare cases, 

 agriculture — forms and reforms men's manners and their 

 institutions when it is the dominant interest in their lives. 

 But what climate and economic habit have done in the 

 past with the Redskins, the same climate and other 

 economic habits are as surely doing with ourseK'es. In 

 the struggle with Nature, as in the struggle with other 

 men, it is the weakest who go to the wall; it is the fittest 

 who survive. And it is our business to know, and to 

 record for those who fome after us, what manner of men 

 we were when we came ; whence we were drawn, and how 

 we are distributed in this new land. An Imperial Bureau 

 of Ethnology, w-hich shall take for its study all citizens 

 of our State, as such, is a dream which has filled great 

 minds in the past and may some day find realisation. A 

 Canadian Bureau is at the same time a nearer object, and 

 a scheme of more practicable size. In the course of this 

 meeting, information and proposals for such a Bureau of 

 Ethnology are to be laid before this section by more com- 

 petent authorities than I. My task has only been to show, 

 in a preliminary way, what our science has done in the 

 past, to stimulate political philosophy, and to determine 

 its course and the order of its discoveries. 



"Some men are borne," said Edward Grimstone just 

 three centuries ago, " so farre in love with themselves, as 

 they esteeme nothing else, and think that whatsoever for- 

 tune hath set without the compasse of their power and 

 government should also be banished from their knowledge. 

 Some others, a little more carefuU ; who finding them- 

 selves engaged by their birth, or abroad, to some one place, 

 strive to understand how matters pass there, and remaine 

 so tied to the consideration of their owne Commonweale, as 

 they affect nothing else, carrying themselves as parties of 

 that imperfect bodie, whereas in their curiositie they should 

 behave themselves as members of this world." It is as 

 " members of this world," I hope, that we meet together 

 to-dav. 



SECTION I. 



niVSIOLOGV. 



Opening .Vopress rv Prof. E. H. St.arling, M.D., 

 F.R.S., President of the Section. 



The Physiologieal Basis of Success. 



Di'RiNG past years it has been customary for the Presi- 

 dents of Sections in their addresses either to give a 

 summary of recent investigations, in order to show the 

 position and outlook of the branch of science appertaining, 

 to the Section, or to utilise the opporfunity for a connected 

 account of researches in which they themselves have been 

 engaged, and can therefore speak with the authority of 

 personal experience as well as with that imparted by the 

 presidential Chair. The growing wealth of publications 

 with the special function of giving summaries and surveys 

 of the different branches of science, drawn up by men 

 ranking as authorities in the subject of which they treat, 

 renders such an interpretation of the presidential duties 

 increasingly unnecessary, and the various journals which 

 are open to every investigator make it difficult for me to 

 give in an address anything which has not already seen 

 the light in other forms. The Association itself, however, 

 has undergone a corresponding modification. Founded as 

 a medium of communication between workers in different- 

 parts of the country, it has gradually acquired the not 

 less important significance of a tribunal from which men 

 of science, leaving fur .1 time their laboratories, can speak 

 to an audience of intelligent laymen, including under this 

 term all those who are engaged in the work of the world 

 other than the advancement of science. These men would' 

 fain know the lessons that science has to teach in the 

 living of the common life. By standing for a moment 

 on the little pinnacle erected by the physicist, the chemist 

 or the botanist, they can, or should be able to, gain new 

 hints as to the conduct of the affairs of themselves, their 

 town or their State. The enormous advance in the com- 

 fort and prosperitv of our race during the last century 

 has been due to the application of science, and this meet- 



