698 REPORT—1904. 
with handles, but were merely grasped in the hand. The varieties of implements 
were very few tm number, each, no doubt, serving a number of purposes, the 
function varying with the requirements of the moment. They had no bows or 
other appliances for accelerating the flight of missiles, no pottery, no permanent 
dwellings; nor is there any evidence of a previous knowledge of such products of 
higher culture. They seem to represent a race which was isolated very early from 
contact with higher races ; in fact, before they had developed more than the merest 
rudiments of culture—a race continuing to live under the most primitive con- 
ditions, from which they were never destined to emerge. 
Between the Tasmanians, representing in their very low culture the one 
extreme, and the most civilised peoples at the other extreme, lie races exhibiting 
in a general way intermediate conditions of advancement or retardation. If we 
are justified, as I think we are, in regarding the various grades of culture observ- 
able among the more lowly of the still existing races of man as representing to a 
considerable extent those vanished cultures which in their succession formed the 
different stages by which civilization emerged gradually from a low state, it surely 
becomes a very important duty for us to study with energy these living illustra- 
tions of early human history in order that the archeological record may be 
supplemented and rendered more complete. The material for this study is vanish- 
ing so fast with the spread of civilization that opportunities lost now will never 
be regained, and already even it is practically impossible to find native tribes which 
are wholly uncontaminated with the products, good or bad, of higher cultures. 
The arts of living races help to elucidate what is obscure in those of prehistoric 
times by the process of reasoning from the known to the unknown. It is the 
work of the zoologist which enables the paleontologist to reconstruct the forms 
of extinct animals from such fragmentary remains as have been preserved, and it 
is largely from the results of a comparative study of living forms and their habitats 
that he is able, in his descriptions, to equip the reconstructed types of a past fauna 
with environments suited to their structure, and to render more complete the 
picture of their mode of life. 
In like manner, the work of the ethnologist can throw light upon the researches 
of the archeologist: through it broken sequences may be repaired, at least 
suggestively, and the interpretation of the true nature and use of objects of 
antiquity may frequently be rendered more sure. Colonel Lane Fox strongly 
advocated the application of the reasoning methods of biology to the study of the 
origin, phylogeny, and etionomics of the arts of mankind, and his own collection 
demonstrated that the products of human intelligence can conveniently be classified 
into families, genera, species, and varieties, and must be so grouped if their 
affinities and development are to be investigated. 
It must not be supposed—although some people, through misapprehension of 
his methods, jumped at this erroneous conclusion—that he was unaware of the 
danger of possibly mistaking mere accidental resemblances for morphological 
affinities, and that he assumed that because two objects, perhaps from widely 
separated regions, appeared more or less identical in form, and possibly in use, 
they were necessarily to be considered as members of one phylogenetic group. On 
the contrary, in the grouping of his specimens according to their form and function, 
he was anxious to assist as far as possible in throwing light upon the question of 
the monogenesis or polygenesis of certain arts and appliances, and to discover 
whether they are exotic or indigenous in the regions in which they are now found, 
and, in fact, to distinguish between mere analogies and true homologies. If we 
accept the theory of the monogenesis of the human race, as most of us undoubtedly 
do, we must be prepared to admit that there prevails a condition of unity in the 
tendencies of the human mind to respond in a similar manner to similar stimuli. 
Like conditions beget like results ; and thus instances of independent invention of 
similar objects are liable to arise. For this very reason, however, the arts and 
customs belonging to even widely separated peoples may, though apparently 
unrelated, help to elucidate some of the points in each other’s history which remain 
obscure through lack of the evidence required to establish local continuity. 
I think, moreover, that it will generally be allowed that cases of ‘independent 
