'niAXSACTIONS 01" Till: SECTIONS. 1-13 



now lay aside my parable, though it admits of some further exteusion, and tako up 

 the actual business of the Department. 



It may be well to lay before the Department, first of all, the titles of a fewof the 

 principal subjects upon which we have papers prepared for us ; and after, or indeed 

 during the enumeration of these specimens of what will prove, I can assure you, a 

 very valuable series of nremoirs, we can proceed, as will be uatm-ally suggested, to 

 those general considerations with which it is customary to open the transactions of 

 such assemblages as ours. 



First among our contributors I must mention the President of the Loudon An- 

 thropological Institute, in which Institute the Ethnological Society of 1844 and 

 the Anthropological Societv of 1863 are imited. Colonel Lane Fox has told us 

 (Archffiologia, xlii. p. 45,1869) that it was whilst serving on the Subcommittee of 

 Small Arms in 1851 that he had his attention di-awn to the principle of continuity 

 by obser^-ing the very slow gradations of progi-ess that were taking place atthat 

 time iu the military weapons of our own country. Out of those labours of his on 

 that Subcommittee other benefits have arisen to the country at large, of which it is 

 not my province to speak. What I have to speak of is his suggestion, put out with 

 greater definiteness in his invaluable Lecture on Primitive Warfare, delivered be- 

 fore the United-Service Institution, June 5, 18G8 (p. 15), to the effect that hisfind at 

 Cissbury furnishes the links which were wanting to connect the Palasolithic with 

 the Neolithic Celt types. Su- John Lubbock* and Mr. Evans t have told us that 

 they do not see their wav towards accepting this view : and Mr, James Geikie, 

 who holds that the palteolithic deposits are of preglacial and interglacial age, is 

 almost necessitated, e.v hypothosi, to repudiate any such transition. He does so 

 (pp. 436-438 of his work on the Great Ice Age) in language which shows us that 

 Colonel Lane Fox's lecture just referred to, with its diagram No. 1 (pruited, it is 

 true, for private circulation), could not have met his eye. Colonel Lane Fox's 

 paper will relate to further explorations carried on at Cissbury during the present 

 vear by a Committee of the Anthropological Institute with the kind permission of 

 Major "Wisden, the owner of the soil. It will raise n-iore than one large question 

 for us to address om'selves to. I shall, when Colonel Lane Fox's paper comes before 

 the Department, contribute towards its discussion by showing a number of flints 

 from Cissbury, given me by my friend Mr. Ballard, of Broadwater. 



Mr. Peugelly will, on Monday, give us an account of the " Anthropological Dis- 

 coveries iu'kent's Cavern." A'more interesting subject will not often have been 

 treated in a more interesting manner. 



Polynesia and Australasia generally have always been an interesting field for the 

 anthropologist. Our recent acquisition of Fiji makes it doubly interesting to us 

 just now ; and a flood of literature has burst forth upon us to meet that interest. 



Professor Dr. Carl E. Meiuicke is to be heartily congi-atulated on having, in the 

 present year, brought out a work on the islands of the Pacific (' Die Inselnder 

 Stillen Oceans, eine geograpliische Monographie.' Erster Theil, Melanesien und Neu- 

 seeland. Leipzig, 1875), iu which he can, with not unbecoming pride, say that he 

 is still working upon the same principles which guided him nearly fifty years ago 

 in the composition of his works on the continent of Australia and the South-Sea 

 races. Though I possess Professor Meinicke's works, I am not as yet entirely in 

 possession of all his views ; but so far as I can see, they are well worthy of atten- 

 tion. I do not hesitate, however, at all in saying that the most important contri- 

 bution to the ethnology of Polynesia which has been made recently is the article 

 on that subject in the 'Contemporary Review ' for February 1873, by the Pev. S. 

 Whitmee, of Samoa. And I may say that I am not without hopes that we shall be 

 favoured with some papers upon the ethnology, anthropology, and future prospects 

 of the Polynesian race by other persons eminently qualified to spealc upon the sub- 

 iect, as having spent many vears usefully among them, and on the spot. I observe 

 that writers who have little respect for most things else, and by no means too much 

 for themselves, speak still with something like appreciation of the work dor.e in 

 those regions by the London Missionary Society ; and we here shall value highly 

 any papei-s which we may be favoured w'ith from men who have had such long and 

 * Nilsaon's 'Primitive Scandinavia,' Editor's Introd. p. 24. 

 t ' Flint Iiuplemonts,' p. 72. 



