294 



ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



Although the meeting-s of the Anthropolog"ical Section pro- 

 duced nothing of startHng- or extraordinary interest, the general 

 high level and value of the communications serve to make the 

 meeting at York a memorable one. The president, Mr. E. 

 Sidney Hartland, F. S.A., has long been recognised as a master 

 of his subject, and his address upon the Origin of Magic and its 

 relation to Religion was freely spoken of as one of the most 

 striking presidential addresses ever delivered to this section. 

 Dealing with the problems of savage religions and savage 

 philosophy, he traced the growth of religious practice from 

 animism to the concept of personality indued with inherent 

 qualities capable of influencing its surroundings. Magic is 

 essentially an application of this idea of the potentiality for good 

 or evil possessed by personality, and spells and incantations are 

 often indistinguishable from prayer and shade Into one another 

 by the finest gradations, while the slavery of man to custom has 

 deep down below the surface an element of religion in it. 



Ethnological problems were treated by Prof. A. C. Haddon, 

 F.R.S. (Ethnology of S. Africa), and Mr. Dornan (The Bush- 

 men of Basutoland), while other contributions dealt with the 

 inhabitants of Ba-Yaka and Sungei-Ujong. Classical archaeology 

 was exceptionally well represented. Mr. D. G. Hogarth de- 

 scribed the remarkable results of his excavation of the primitive 

 Artemisia of Ephesus, undertaken under the auspices of the 

 British Museum, the discoveries in which were described by 

 Mr. R. C. Bosanquet as hardly yielding in importance to 

 Schliemann's excavations on the site of Troy. Mr. Bosanquet 

 himself showed the remarkably successful results of his excava- 

 tions in Sparta, which had resulted in the discovery of the 

 sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Dr. D. Ashby detailed the result 

 of recent explorations in the Roman Forum, and also upon the 

 site of Venta Silurum (Caerwent). The chief archieological 

 interest, however, was centred in the lecture by Prof. W. 

 Flinders Petrie upon the work of the British School of 

 Archaeology in Egypt and the discovery of the site of a fortress 

 of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who held Egypt from about 

 2400 to 1600 B.C. This great earth bank, 20 miles north ot 

 Cairo, which in all probabilit\ represents the Hyksos Camp of 

 Avaris, had originally a great outward slope of while stucco 60 

 or 70 feet in length, with a long sloping entr uice ascending 

 over the bank which appears to ha\e been subsequently encased 

 in fioiil with a wall of limestone Ijlocks some 45 feet high. 



NaturalUt 



