168 REPORT— 1872. 



actually on the move at the present time. Hereafter, m all probability, as they 

 continue to vary by the omission of some portions of the ceremonies and the substitu- 

 tion of others, some one village, more advanced and more powerful than its neigh- 

 bours, in the natural course of things will obtain the ascendency, and will impose 

 its peculiar and greatly modified version of these rites upon the neighbouring vil- 

 lages, by which means the links of connexion will be completely lost. I believe 

 the time is at hand when we shall make as much ado over a variety of custom or 

 form of implement as naturalists now do over a new moth or a beetle, and then 

 anthropology wiU become a science. 



My next illustration is taken from the ornamental paddles of the New-Irelanders, 

 one of the Papuan group of islands adjoining the one in which Bishop Patteson 

 was lately murdered. In none of the productions of savage art is the tendency to 

 continued variation within narrow limits more strongly shown than in these orna- 

 mental patterns. Whilst the form of a club or a paddle appears to remain un- 

 changed for many generations, the form of ornament upon it will be subject to 

 variations, which, however, are not the less found to be continuous and connected 

 when a sufficient number of specimens are collected, so as to enable their history 

 to be traced. The continuous looped coil and its varieties, and its ultimate deve- 

 lopment into the continuous fret pattern, may be traced in its migrations through 

 distant regions. Sometimes a particular variety of these patterns will establish 

 itself in a tribe or a nation ; and whilst subject to an infinity of subvarieties, it will 

 be found to be repeated over and over again in aU the weapons and implements 

 belonging to this tribe. The ornamentation employed by the tribes on the N.W. 

 coast of America consists entirely of the representation of a bird's head, the eyes 

 and beak of which have been subject to such variations in copying as completely 

 to have lost all trace of the original design. The New-Ivelanders ornament their 

 paddles with the figure of a man painted in red and black, carved upon the face of 

 the blade. Fig. 2 is a good example of this conventionalized mode of representing 

 the human figure in full ; fig. 11 is another ornament upon the paddle of the same 

 people ; and between these two figures it would not at first sight appear possible 

 that any connexion could be traced. 



Ingenious theories might, perhaps, be based upon the occurrence of such a 

 figure as that represented in fig. 11 amongst the Papuan Islands; it might be 

 assumed that Mahomedanism had once penetrated that region, and they had 

 adopted the symbol of tlie crescent, or the advocates of spontaneity would find no 

 difficulty in at once assuming that they had copied the new moon. No one who 

 had not by previous experience been impressed with the continuity pervading all 

 savage ornamentation would dream of connecting two such widely different forms 

 as those represented in these two figures. Those, however, who are familiar with 

 the pictographic changes which marked the origin of the Phoenician and Scandi- 

 navian alphabets, or who have studied Mr. Evans's work on Ancient British Coins, 

 or the researches of Mr. Edward Thomas into the Coins of India, will be prepared for 

 the marvellous transformations to which human and other forms are subjected 

 when they are copied and recopied by the inaccurate and uninstructed eyes of 

 savage imitators. They will remember how the chariot and horses on the 

 Greek coins of Philip of Macedon, in the hands of the Gaulish and British artists, 

 gradually lost, first the body of the chariot, then the body of the charioteer — how the 

 wheels of the chariot became mixed up with the body of the horse, and the head 

 of the driver appeared floating like a cherubim over the horse's ears — and how, on the 

 obverse of the coin, the nose and features of the head gradually disappeared, until 

 nothing but the wreath converted into a cruciform ornament remained to connect 

 it with the original figure of the Greek king. Impressed with the idea of the physical 

 identity of people in the same condition of culture, I determined to collect New- 

 Ireland paddles, and see whether a connexion would be found to exist between the 

 peculiar patterns with which they are ornamented. The result is the series now 

 before you, which I have obtained at ditierent times during the last seven years as 

 they turned up in curiosity-shops or were brought over by travellers from the 

 South Seas ; and it must be understood that these particular specimens are not 

 selected to serve my purpose. I have here given the whole of the collection of 

 patterns which have fallen into my hands. Let us see how far they serve to sup- 



