718 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



knowledge of the law and history of India. It seems obvious that this leaves 

 little time for the scientific study of anthropology; and the most that can be ex- 

 pected is to excite in the young official a desire to study the native races and to 

 define the subjects to which his attention may usefully be directed. There is, 

 again, the obvious risk of letting loose the half-trained amateur among savage or 

 semi-savage peoples. He may see a totem in every hedge or expect to meet a corn- 

 spirit on every threshing-floor. He may usurp the functions of the arm-chair 

 anthropologist by adding to his own proper business, which is the collection of 

 facts, an attempt to explain their scientific relations. As a matter of fact, the true 

 anthropologist is born, not made; and no possible course of study can be useful 

 except in the case of the few who possess a natural taste for this kind of work. 



Having then practically exhausted our present agency it is incumbent upon 

 us to press upon the Governments throughout the Empire the necessity of entrust- 

 ing the supervision of ethnographical surveys to specialists. This principle 

 has been recognised in the case of botany, geology, and archaeology, and it is high 

 time that it was extended to anthropology. It is the possession of such a trained 

 staff that has enabled the American Government to carry out with success a survey 

 of the natives of the Philippine Islands ; and it is gratifying to record that the 

 Canadian legislature, in response to resolutions adopted by this section at the 

 Winnipeg meeting, has recently voted funds to provide the salary of a superin- 

 tendent of the ethnological survey. We may confidently expect that other 

 governments throughout the Empire will soon follow this laudable example. These 

 governments will, of course, continue to collect at each periodical census those 

 statistics and facts of sociology and economics which are required for purposes 

 of administration. But beyond these practical objects there are questions which 

 can be adequately investigated only by specialists. 



The duties of such a director will necessarily be threefold : First, to sift, 

 arrange, and co-ordinate the facts already collected by non-scientific observers ; 

 secondly, to initiate and control special investigations, in particular that intensive 

 study of smaller groups within a limited area which, in the case of the survey 

 of the Todas by Dr. Rivers, has so largely contributed to our knowledge of that 

 tribe. Such methods not only open out new scientific fields, but — and this is 

 perhaps more important — establish a standard of efficiency which improves later 

 surveys of these or neighbouring races. 



The field for inquiry throughout the Empire is so vast that there is ample 

 room for expeditions independent of official patronage. In some respects the 

 private traveller possesses advantages over the official — in his freedom from the 

 bondage of red tape and from the suspicion which inevitably attaches to the 

 servant of government that his inquiries are conducted with the object of impos- 

 ing taxation or of introducing some irksome measures of administration. He is 

 always sure to receive the aid of local officers, whose familiarity with the native 

 races must be of the highest value. 



The third duty of the director will be to organise in a systematic way the 

 collection of specimens for home and colonial museums. Our ethnographical 

 museums, as a whole, have not reached that standard of efficiency which the 

 importance of the Empire and the needs of training in anthropology obviously 

 require; and our students have to seek in museums at Berlin and other foreign 

 cities for collections illustrative of tribes which have long been subject to British 

 law. It is only necessary to refer to the recent handbook of the ethnographical 

 collections in the British Museum to see that there are wide gaps in the series 

 which might easily be filled by systematic effort. No time is to be lost, because 

 the tragedy of the extinction of the savage is approaching the final act, and our 

 grandchildren will search for him in vain except perhaps in the slums of our 

 greater cities. 



Assuming then that in the near future anthropological inquiries will be 

 organisedon practical lines, I invite your attention to some special problems in 

 India which deserve intensive study, and which can be solved in no other way. 

 India is a most promising field for such inquiries. Here the student of compara- 

 tive religion can trace with more precision than is possible in any other part 

 of the Empire the development of animism and the interaction on it of the forces 

 represented by Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. The anthropo- 

 logist can observe the most varied types of moral and material culture, from 



