682 KEPORT— 1881. 



DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Chairman of the Departmext— Professor W. H. Flower, LL.D., F.K.S., 

 F.R.C.S., F.L.S., F.G.S., Pres. Z.S. (Vice-President of the Section). 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 



The CHAiRMAif delivered the following Address : — 



It is. impossible for us to commence tlie -work of this Section of the Association 

 without having vividly brouglit to our minds the loss which lias befallen us since 

 our last meeting — the loss of one who was our most characteristic representative 

 of the complex science of Anthropology — one who had for many years conducted 

 with extraordinary energy, amidst multifarious other avocations, a series of re- 

 searches into the history, customs, and physical characters of the early inhabitants 

 of our island, for which he was so especially fitted by his archreological, historical, 

 and literary as well as his anatomical knowledge, and who was also the most 

 popular and brilliant expositor, to assemblies such as meet together on these occa- 

 sions, of the results of those researches. I need scarcely say that I refer to 

 Professor Eolleston. 



Within the last few months the study of our subject in this country has 

 received an impulse from the publication of a book — small in size, it is true, but 

 full of materials for thought and instruction— the ' Anthropology ' of Mr. E. B, 

 Tylor, the first work published in English with tliat title, and one very diflerent 

 in its scope and method from the older ethnological treatises. 



The immense array of facts brought together in a small compass, the terseness 

 and elegance of the style, the good taste and feeling with which ditticalt and often 

 burning questions are treated, should give this book a wide circulation among all 

 classes, and thoroughly familiarise both the word and the subject to English 

 readers. 



The origin and early history of man's civilisation, his language, his arts of life, 

 his religion, science, and social customs in the primitive conditions of society, are 

 subjects in which, in consequence of their direct continuity with the arts and 

 sciences, religious, political, and social customs among which we all live,by which 

 we are all influenced, and about which we all have opinions, every person of ordinary 

 education can and should take an interest. In fact, really to understand all these 

 problems in the complex condition in which they are presented to us now, we 

 ought to study them in their more simple forms, and trace them as far as ma}' be 

 to their origins. 



But, as the author remarks, this book is only an introduction to anthropology, 

 rather than a summary of all that it teaches ; and some, even those that many con- 

 sider the most important, branches of the subject are but lightly touched upon, or 

 wholly passed over. 



In one of the estimates of the character and opinions of the very remarkable 

 man and eminent statesman, whose death the country was mourning last spring, it 

 was stated : ' Lord Beaconsfield had a deep-rooted conviction of the vast importance 

 of race, as determining the relative dominance both of societies and of indivi- 

 duals ; ' ' and with regard to the question of what he meant by * race,' we have a 

 key in the last published work of the same acute observer of mankind : ' Language 

 and religion do not make a race — there is only one thing which makes a race, and 

 that is blood.' "^ Now ' blood ' used in this sense is defined as ' kindred ; relation by 

 natural descent from a common ancestor ; consanguinity.' ^ The study of the true 



' Spectator, April 23, 1881. * Endymion, vol. ii. p. 205. 



» Webster's Dictionaiy. 



