154 REPORT — 1875. 



and relations of even gi-eat events and catastrophes ; still the older works retain a 

 lasting value, and will remain as solid testimonies to English intellect and English 

 capacity for large undertakings as long as our now rapidly extending language and 

 literature live. The same may be most truthfully said of Prichard's ' Researches 

 into the Physical History of Mankind.' An increase of knowledge may supply us 

 with fresh and with stronger arguments than he could command for some of the 

 great conclusions for which he contended ; such, notably, has been the case in the 

 question (though " question " it can no longer be called) of the Unity of the human 

 species ; and by the employment of the philosophy of continuity and the doctrine 

 of evolution, with which the world was not made acquainted till more than ten 

 years after Prichard's death, many a weaker man than he has been enabled to bind 

 into more readily manageable burdens the vast collections of facts with which he 

 had to deal. Still his works remain, massive, impressive, enduring — much as the 

 headlands along our southern coast stand out in the distance in their own grand 

 outlines, whilst a close and minute inspection is necessary for the discernment of 

 the forts and fosses added to them, indeed dug out of their substance in recent 

 times. If we consider what the condition of the subject was when Piichard 

 addressed himself to it, we shall be the better qualitied to take and make an esti- 

 . mate of his merits. This Prichard has himself described to us, in a passage to be 

 found in the preface to the third volume of the third edition of the ' Physical 

 History,' published in the year 1841, and reminding one forcibly of a similar 

 iitterance of Aristotle's, at the end of one of his logical treatises (Soph. Elench. 

 cap. xxxiv. G). These are his words : — 



" No other writer has surveyed the same field, or any great part of it, from a 

 similar point of view. . . . The lucubrations of Herder and other diffuse writers of 

 the same description, while some of them possess a merit of their own, are not con- 

 cerned in the same design, or directed towards the same scope. Their object is to 

 portray national character as resulting from combined influences — physical, moral, 

 and political. They abound in generalizations, often in the speculative flights of a 

 discursive fancy, and afford little or no aid for the close induction from facts, which 

 is the aim of the present work. Nor have these inquiries often come within the 

 view of writers on GeogTaphy, though the history of the globe is, very incomplete 

 without that of its human inhabitants." A generation has scarcely passed away 

 since these words were published in 1841 ; we are living in 1875 ; yet what a change 

 has been effected in the condition of Anthropological literature ! The existence of 

 such a dignified quarterly as the ' Archiv fiir Anthropologic,' bearing on its titlepage 

 in alphabetical order the honoured names of V. Baer, of Desor, of Ecker, of Hellwald, 

 of His, of Lindenschmidt, of Luca3, of Riitimeyer, of Schaafhausen, of Semper, of 

 Virchow, of Vogt, and of Welcker, is in itself perhaps the most striking evidence 

 of the advance made in this time, as being the most distinctly ponderable and in 

 every sense the largest Anthropological publication of the day. 



Ai-chgeology, which but a short time back was studied in a'way which admirably 

 qualified its devotees for being called "connoisseurs," but which scarcely qualified 

 them for being called men of Science, has by its alliance with Natural History 

 and its adoption of Natural-History methods, and its availing itself of the light 

 afforded by the great Natural-History principles just alluded to, entered on a 

 new career. There is, as regards Natural History, Anatomy, and Pathology, 

 nothing left to be desired for the conjoint scheme represented by the periodical just 

 mentioned, where we have V. Baer for the first and Virchow for the last, and* the 

 other names specified for the rest of these subjects ;• whilst Archajology, the other 

 party in the alliance, is very adequately represented by Lindenschmidt alone. But 

 when I recollect that Prichard published a work ' On the Eastern Origin of the Celtic 

 Nations ' ten years before the volume of ' Researches,' from which I have just quoted, 

 and that this work has been spoken of as the work " which has made the greatest 

 advance in Comparative Philology during the present century," I cannot but feel 

 that the Redaction of the 'Archiv fiir Anthropologic ' have not as yet learnt all that 

 may be learnt from the Bristol Ethnologist ; and they would do well to add to the 

 very strong staff" represented on their titlepage the name of some one, or the names 

 of more than one comparative philologist. This the Berlin 'Zeitschrift ' has done. 

 Of the possible curative application of some of the leading principles of modern 



