TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. DEPT. ANTHKOPOLOGY. 389 



Russia, while others declared that it was the King of Prussia who had heen playing 

 cards with the Sidtau of Turkey, and had staked and lost 40,000 fair-haired, blue- 

 eyed children ; and there were Moors travelling about in covered carts to collect 

 them • and the schoolmasters were helping, for they were to have five dollars for 

 every child they handed over. For a time the popular excitement was quite serious : 

 the parents kept the children away from school and hid them, and when they 

 appeared in the streets of the markei>town the little ones clung to them vi ith 

 terrified looks. Dr. Schwartz, the well-known mythologist, took the pains to traee 

 the rumour to its sources. One thing was quite plain, that its prime cause was 

 that grave and learned body, the Anthropological Society of Berlin, who, without a 

 thought of the commotion they were stirring up, had, in order to class the popula- 

 tion as to race, induced the authorities to have a census made throughout the local 

 schools to ascertain the colour of the children's skin, hair, and eyes. Had it been 

 only the boys, to the Government inspection of whom for military conscription the 

 German peasants are only too well accustomed, nothing would have been thought of 

 it ; but why shoidd the officials want to know about the little girls' hair and eyes ? 

 The whole group of stories which suddenly sprang up were myths created to 

 answer this question ; and even the details which became embodied with them 

 could all be traced to their sources, such as the memories of German princes selling 

 regiments of their people to pay their debts, the late political negotiations between 

 Germany and Russia, &c. The fact that a caravan of Moors had been travelling 

 about as a show accounted for the covered carts with which they were to fetch the 

 ■children ; while the schoolmasters were naturally implicated, as having drawn up 

 the census. One schoolmaster, who evidently knew his people, assured the terrified 

 parents that it was only the children with blue hair and green eyes that were 

 -wanted— an explanation which sent them home quite comforted. After all, there 

 is no reason why we shoidd not come in time to a thorough understanding of 

 mytholoo-y. The human mind is much what it used to be, and the principles of 

 myth-making may still be learnt from the peasants of Europe. 



AVhen within the memory of some here present, the Science of Man was just 

 coming into notice, it seemed as though the study of races, customs, traditions, 

 were a limited though interesting task, which might after a few years come so near 

 the end of its materials as no longer to have much new to offer. Its real course 

 has been far otherwise. Twenty years ago it was no difficult task to follow it step 

 by step • but now even the yearly list of new anthropological literature is enough 

 to form a pamphlet, and each capital of Europe has its Anthropological Society in 

 Ml work. So far from any look of finality in anthropological investigations, each 

 new line of argument but "opens the way to others behind, while these lines tend 

 as plainly as in the sciences of stricter weight and measure, toward the meeting 

 ground of all sciences in the unity of nature. 



The following Report and Papers were read :— 



1. Report of the Committee for conducting Excavations at Portsiewart and 

 elsewhere in the North of Ireland. See Reports, p. 171. 



2. On Flint Implements from the Valley of the Bann. By W. J. Knowles. 



The author has obtained within the last three or four years, from the banks of 

 the river Bann, a series of flint weapons or tools which differ considerably in type 

 from the ordinary flint implements of the North of Ireland. They have been 

 obtained from a deposit of diatomaceous earth used for brickmaking near the town 

 of Portglenone, and are of two types. That which is most numerous appears to 

 have been made by splitting nodules into halves or quarters and then forming these 

 into rude pointed implements by a process of coarse chipping. This kind numbers 

 upwards of 50, and they all agree in having a cutting point, and thick base for 



