TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 697 
strata of human evolution ; vestiges of ancient conditions which have fallen out 
at different points and have been left behind in the general march of progress. 
Taken together, the various living races of Man seem almost to form a kind of 
living genealogical tree, as it were, and it is as an epiphyte upon this tree that the 
comparative ethnologist largely thrives; while to the archeologist it may also prove 
a tree of knowledge the fruit of which may be eaten with benefit rather than 
risk, 
This certainly seems to be a legitimate assumption in a general way ; but there 
are numerous factors which should be borne in mind when we endeavour to 
elucidate the past by means of the present. If the various gradations of culture 
exhibited by the condition of living races—the savage, semi-civilized, or barbaric, 
and the civilized races—could be regarded as accurately typifying the successive 
stages through which the higher forms of culture have been evolved in the course 
of the ages; if, in fact, the different modern races of mankind might be accepted 
as so many sections of the human race whose intellectual development has been 
arrested or retarded at various definite stages in the general progression, then we 
should have, to all intents and purposes, our genealogical tree in a very perfect 
state, and by its means we could reconstruct the past and study with ease the 
steady growth of culture and handicrafts from the earliest simple germs, reflecting 
the mental condition of primeval man up to the highest manifestations of the 
most cultured races. 
These ideal conditions are, however, far from being realised. Intellectual 
progress has not advanced along a single line, but, in its development, it has 
branched off in various directions, in accordance with varying environment ; and 
the tracing of lines of connection between different forms of culture, as is the case 
with the physical variations, is a matter of intricate complexity. Migrations with 
the attendant climatic changes, change of food, and, in fact, of general environment, 
to say nothing of the crossing of different stocks, transmission of ideas from one 
people to another, and other factors, all tend to increase the tangle. 
Although in certain instances savage tribes or races show obvious signs of 
having degenerated to some extent from conditions of a higher culturedom, this 
cannot be regarded as the general rule, and we must always bear in mind the 
seemingly paradoxical truth that degradation in the culture of the lower races is 
often, if not usually, the direct result of contact with peoples in a far higher state 
of civilization. 
There can, I think, be little doubt that Colonel Lane Fox was well justified in 
urging the view that most savage races are in large measure strictly primitive, 
survivals from early conditions, the development: of their ideas having from various 
causes remained practically stationary during a very considerable period of time. 
In the lower, though not degenerate, races signs of this are not wanting, and 
while few, possibly none, can be said to be absolutely in a condition of arrested 
development, their normal progress is at a slow, in most cases at a very slow, rate. 
Perhaps the best example of a truly primitive race existing in recent times, of 
which we have any knowledge, was afforded by the native inhabitants of Tasmania. 
This race was still existing fifty years ago, and a few pure-blooded survivors 
remained as late as about the year 1870, when the race became extinct, the benign 
civilizing influence of enlightened Europeans having wiped this extremely inter- 
esting people off the face of the earth. The Australians, whom Colonel Lane Fox 
referred to as being ‘the lowest amongst the existing races of the world of whom 
we have any accurate knowledge,’ are very far in advance of the Tasmanians, 
whose lowly state of culture conformed thoroughly with the characteristics of a 
truly primitive race, a survival not only from the Stone Age in general, but from 
almost the earliest beginnings of the Stone Age. The difference between the culture 
of the Tasmanians and that of the Australians was far greater than that which 
exists between man of the ‘ River Drift’ period and his Neolithic successors. The 
objects of every-day use were but slight modifications of forms suggested by 
Nature, involving the exercise of merely the simplest mental processes. ‘The stone 
implements were of the rudest manufacture, far inferior in workmanship to those 
made by Palwolithic man; they were never ground or polished, never even fitted 
