TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 773 



was approved by the Association, and grants amounting to 701. were made to 

 assist in defraying the cost of publication. The Council of the Anthropological 

 Institute appointed a Committee of its members to undertake the revision of the 

 different subjects, with Dr. J. G. Garson and Mr. C. II. Read as editors respectively 

 of the two parts into which it is divided. The work was published at the end of 

 the year 1892, and is invaluable to the traveller or investigator in pointing out the 

 most important subjects of inquiry, and in directing the observations he may have 

 the means of making into a methodical and systematic channel. 



Besides those I have already mentioned, the Association has aided many other 

 anthropological investigations by the appointment of Committees to carry them 

 out, and in some cases by the more substantial method of giving grants from its 

 funds, and by defraying the cost of publication of the results iu its journal. 

 Among these I may specially mention the series of very valuable Reports upon the 

 Physical Characters, Languages, and Industrial and Social Condition of the North- 

 Western Tribes of the Dominion of Canada, drawn up by Mr. Horatio Hale, Dr. 

 F. Boas, and others, the importance of which has been recognised by the Canadian 

 Government in the form of a grant in aid of the expenses. 



Another very interesting investigation into the Habits, Customs, Physical 

 Characteristics, and Religion of the Natives of Northern India, initiated by Mr. 

 H. H. Risley, and carried on under his supervision by the Indian Government, 

 though it has received little more than moral support from the Association, may 

 be mentioned here on account of the illustration it affords of the value of exact 

 anthropometric methods in distinguishing groups of men. Although a practised eye 

 can frequently tell at a glance the tribe or caste of a man brought before it for 

 the first time, the special characters upon which the opinion is based have only 

 lately been reduced to any definite and easily comparable method of description. 

 In Mr. Risley's examination, the nose, for instance (which I have always held to be 

 one of the most important of features for classificatory purposes), instead of being 

 vaguely described as broad or narrow, is accurately measured, and the proportion 

 of the greatest width to the length (from above downwards), or the 'nasal index,' 

 as it is termed (though it must not be confounded with the nasal index as defined 

 by Broca upon the skull), gives a figure by which the main elements of the com- 

 position of this feature in any individual maybe accurately described. The average 

 or mean nasal indices of a large number of individuals of any race, tribe, or caste offer 

 means of comparison which bring out most interesting results. By this character 

 alone the Dravidian tribes of India are easily separated from the Aryan. ' Even 

 more striking is the curiously close correspondence between the gi-adations of racial 

 type indicated by the nasal index and certain of the social data ascertained by 

 independent inquiry. If we take a series of castes in Bengal, Behar, or the North- 

 western Provinces, and arrange them in the order of the average nasal index, so 

 that the caste with the finest nose shall be at the top, and that with the coarsest 

 at the bottom of the list, it will be found that this order substantially corresponds 

 with the accepted order of social precedence. The casteless tribes — Kols, Korwas, 

 Mundas, and the like — who have not yet entered the Brahmanical system, occupy 

 the lowest place in both series. Then come the vermin-eating Musuhars and the 

 leather-dressing Chamars. The fisher castes of Bauri, Bind, and Kewat are a 

 trifle higher in the scale ; the pastoral Goala, the cultivating Kurmi, and a group 

 of cognate castes — from whose hands a Brahman may take water — follow in due 

 order ; and from them we pass to the trading Khatris, the landholding Babhans, 

 and the upper crust of Hindu society. Thus, it is scarcely a paradox to lay doAvn 

 as a law of the caste organisation in Eastern India that a man's social status varies 

 in inverse ratio to the width of his nose.' The results already obtained by this 

 method of observation have been so important and interesting that it is greatly to 

 be hoped that the inquiry may be extended throughout the remainder of our Indian 

 Empire. 



But for want of time I might here refer to the valuable work done in relation 

 to the natives of the Andaman Islands, a race m many respects of most excep- 

 tional interest, first by Mr. E. H. Man, and more recently by Mr. M. V. Portman, 

 ^nd for the same reason can scarcely glance at the great progress that is being 



