TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 511 
Szction H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SecTtION—A. C, Happon, M.A., Se.D., F.R.S. 
CAPE TOWN. 
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
THERE are various ways in which man can study himself, and it is clearly im- 
possible for me to attempt to give an exposition of all the aims and methods 
of the anthropological sciences ; I propose, therefore, to limit myself to a general 
view of South African ethnology, incidentally referring to a few of the problems 
that strike 2 European observer as needing further elucidation. It seems some- 
what presumptuous in one who is now for the first time visiting this continent to 
venture to address a South African audience on local ethnology, but I share this 
disability with practically all students of anthropology at home, and my excuse 
lies in the desire that I may be able to point out to you some of the directions in 
which the information of anthropologists is deficient, with the hope that this may 
be remedied in the immediate future. 
Men are naturally apt to take an exclusive interest in their immediate 
concerns, and even anthropologists are liable to fall into the danger of studying 
men’s thoughts and deeds by themselves, without taking sufficient account of 
the outside influences that affect mankind. 
In the sister science of zoology, it is possible to study animals as machines 
which are either at rest or in motion: when they are thus studied individually, 
the subjects are termed anatomy and physiology; when they are studied com- 
paratively, they are known as comparative anatomy or morphology and com- 
parative physiology. The study of the genesis of the machine is embryology, and 
paleontologists, as it were, turn over the scrap-heap. All these sciences can deal 
with animals irrespective of their environment, and perhaps for intensive study 
such a limitation is temporarily desirable, but during the period of greatest 
specialisation there have always been some who have followed in the footsteps of 
the field naturalist, and to-day we are witnessing a combination of the two lines 
of study. 
Biology has ceased to be a mixture of necrology and physiology; it seeks to 
obtain a survey of all the conditions of existence, and to trace the effects of the 
environment on the organism, of the organism on the environment, and of 
organism upon organism. Much detailed work will always be necessary, and 
we shall never be able to do without isolated laboratory work; but the day is 
past when the amassing of detailed information will satisfy the demands of 
science. The leaders, at all events, will view the subject as a whole, and so 
direct individual labour that the hewers of wood and drawers of water, as it were, 
