TRANSACTIONS OF SKCTION D. — DEFT. ANTHEOrOLOGT. 683 



relrttionsliip of the different races of men is then not only interesting from a 

 scientific point of view, but of great importance to statesmanship in siicli a country 

 as this, emhracinn;' subjects representing almost every known luodification of the 

 human species whose varied and often contiicting interests have to be regulated and 

 provided for. It is to want of appreciation of its importance that many of the incon- 

 sistencies and shortcomings of the government of our dependencies and colonies are 

 due, especiall}' the great inconsistency between a favourite English theory and a too 

 common English practice — the former being that all men are morally and in- 

 tellectually alike, the latter being that all are equally inferior to himself in all 

 respects : both propositions ,egregiously fallacious. The study of race is at a low 

 ebb indeed when we hear the same contemptuous epithet of 'nigger' applied 

 indiscriminately by the Englishman abroad to the blacks of the West Coast of 

 Africa, the Kaffirs of Natal, the Lascars of Bombay, the Hindoos of Calcutta, the 

 aborigines of Australia, and even the Maoris of New Zealand ! 



But how is he to know better ? Where in this country is any instruction to be 

 had? Where are the books to which he may turn for trustworthy information ? 

 The subject, as I have said, is but slightly touched upon in the last published 

 treatise on anthropology in our language. The great work of Pritchard, a com- 

 pendium of all that was known at the time it was written, is now almost entirely . 

 out of date. In not a single university or public institution throughout the three 

 kingdoms is there any kind of sj'stematic teaching, either of physical or of any 

 other branch of anthropology, except so far as comparative philology may be con- 

 sidered as bearing upon the subject. The one society of which it is the special 

 business to promote the study of these questions, the Anthropological Institute 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, is, I regret to say, far from flourishing. An anthropo- 

 logical museum, in the proper sense of the word, either public or private, does not 

 exist in this country. 



What a contrast is this to what we see in almost every other nation in Europe t 

 At Paris there is, first, the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, where man, as a zoological 

 subject— almost entirely neglected in our British Museum — has a magnificent gallery 

 allotted to him, abounding not only in illustrations of osteology, but also in models, 

 casts, drawings, and anatomical preparations showing various points in his physical 

 or natural history, which is expounded to the public in the free lectures of the 

 venerable Professor Quatrefages and his able coadjutor, Dr. Hamy ; there is also 

 the vigorous'Society of Anthropology, which is stated in the last annual report to 

 number 720 members, showing an increase of 44 during the year 1880, and which 

 is forming a museum on a most extensive scale; and, finally, the School of Anthropo- 

 logy, founded by the illustrious Broca, whose untimely death last year, instead of 

 paralysing, seems to have stimulated the energies of colleagues and pupils into in- 

 creased activity. In this school, supported partly by private subscriptions, partly 

 by the public liberality of the Municipality of Paris, and of the Department of the 

 Seine, are laboratories in which all the processes of anthropological manipulation 

 are practised by students and taught to travellers. Here all the bodies of persons 

 of outlandish nationalities dying in any of the hospitals of Paris are dissected by 

 competent and zealous observers, who carefully record every peculiarity of structure 

 discovered, and are thus laying the foundation for an exhaustive and trustworthy 

 collection of materials for the comparative anatomy of the races of man. Here, 

 furthermore, are lectureships on all the different branches. Biological and ana- 

 tomical anthropology, ethnology, pre-historic, linguistic, social, and medical an- 

 thropology are all treated of separately by eminent professors who have made 

 these departments their special study. The influence of so much activity is spread- 

 ing beyond the capital. The foundation of an Anthropological Society at Lyons 

 has been announced within the present year. 



In Germany, although there is not at present any institution organised like the 

 school at Paris, the flourishing state of the Berlin Ethnological Society, which 

 also reports a large increase in the number of its members, the various other 

 societies and journals, and the important contributions which are continually being 

 made from the numerous intellectual centres of that land of learning, all attest the 

 interest which the study of man excites there. In Italy, in the Scandinavian 



