TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. 387 



has been the metal in use. Thus there is nothing to interfere with the facts rest- 

 ing on archaeological evidence, that in such districts as Scandinavia or Switzerland 

 a Stone Age was at some ancient time followed by a Bronze Age, and this again 

 by an Iron Age. We may notice that the latter change is what has happened in 

 America within a few centuries, where the Mexicans and Peruvians, found by the 

 Spaniards living in the Bronze Age, were moved on into the Iron Age. But the 

 question is whether we are to accept as a general principle in history the doctrine 

 expounded in the poem of Lucretius, that men first used boughs and stones, that 

 then the use of bronze became known, and lastly iron was discovered. As the 

 evidence stands now, the priority of the Stone Age to the Metal Age is more 

 firmly established than ever, but the origin of both bronze and iron is lost in 

 antiquity, and we have no certain proof which came first. 



Passing to another topic of our science, it is satisfactory to see with what 

 activity the comparative study of laws and customs, to which Sir Henry Maine 

 gave a new starting-point in England, is now pursued. The remarkable inquiry 

 into the very foundations of society in the structure of the family, set afoot by 

 Bachofen m his ' Miitterrecht,' and M'Lennan in his ' Primitive Marriage,' is now 

 bringing in every year new material. Mr. L. H. Morgan, who, as an adopted 

 Iroquois, became long ago familiar with the marriage-laws and ideas of kinship of 

 uncultured races, so unlike those of the civilised world, has lately made, in his 

 * Ancient Society,' a bold attempt to solve the whole difficult problem of the develop- 

 ment of social life. I will not attempt here any criticism of the views of these and 

 other writers on a problem where the last word has certainly not been said. My 

 object in touching the subject is to mention the curious evidence that can still be 

 given by rude races as to their former social ties, in traditions which will be forgotten 

 in another generation of civilised life, but may still be traced by missionaries and 

 others who know what to seek for. Thus, such inquiry in Polynesia discloses 

 remarkable traces of a prevalent marriage-tie which was at once polygamous and 

 polyandrous, as where a family of brothers were married jointly to a family of 

 sisters; and I have just noticed in a recent volume on 'Native Tribes of South 

 Australia,' a mention of a similar state of things occurring there. As to the 

 general study of customs, the work done for years past by such anthropologists as 

 Professor Bastian, of Berlin, is producing substantial progress. Among recent 

 works I will mention Dr. Karl Andree's ' Ethnologische Paralleled and Mr. J. A. 

 Farrer's ' Primitive Manners.' In the comparison of customs and inventions, 

 however, the main difficulty still remains to be overcome, how to decide certainly 

 whether they have sprung up independently alike in different lands through like- 

 ness in the human mind, or whether they have travelled from a common source. To 

 show how difficult this often is, I may mention the latest case I have happened to meet 

 with. The Orang Dongo, a mountain people in the Malay region, have a custom of 

 inheritance that when a man dies the relatives each take a share of the property, 

 and the deceased inherits one share for himself, which is burnt or buried for his 

 ghost's use, or eaten at the funeral feast. This may strike many of my hearers as 

 quaint enough and unlikely to recur elsewhere ; but Mr. Charles Elton, who has 

 special knowledge of our ancient legal customs, has pointed out to me that it was 

 actually old Kentish law, thus laid down in Law-French:— 'Ensement seient les 

 chateus de gauylekendeys parties en treis apres le exequies e les dettes rendues si il 

 y est issue mulier en vye, issi que la mort eyt la une partie, e les fitz e les filles 

 muliers lautre partie e la femme la tierce partie.'—' In like sort let the chattels of 

 gavelkind persons be divided into three after the funeral and payment of debts if 

 there be lawful issue living, so that the deceased have one part, and the lawful sons 

 and daughters the other part, and the wife the third part.' The Church had indeed 

 taken possession, for pious uses, of the dead man's share of his own property ; but 

 there is good Scandinavian evidence that the original custom before Christian 

 times was for it to be put in his burial-mound. Thus the rite of the rude Malay 

 tribe corresponds with that of ancient Europe, and the question which the evidence 

 does not yet enable us to answer, is whether the custom was twice invented, or 

 whether it spread east and west from a common source, perhaps in the Aryan 

 district of Asia. 



It remains for me to notice the present state of Comparative Mythology, a most 



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