886 BEPORT — 1892. 



Section H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Pbesident of the Section — Alexander Macamster, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of 

 Anatomy iu the University of Cambridge. 



THURSDA Y, A UG UST 4. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



On an irregular, and unfenced patch of waste land, situated on the outskirts of 

 a small town in which I spent part of my boyhood, there stood a notice-board 

 bearing the inscription ' A Free Coup,' which, when translated into the language 

 of the Southron, conveyed the intimation, ' rubbish maybe shot here.' This place, 

 with its ragged mounds of unconsidered trifles, the refuse of the surrounding 

 households, was the favourite playground of the children of the neighbourhood, 

 who found a treasury of toys in the broken tiles and oyster-shells, the crockeiy 

 and cabbage-stalks, which were liberally scattered around. Many a make-believe 

 house and road, and even village, was constructed Iw these mimic builders out of 

 this varied material, which their busy little feet had trodden down until its 

 undulated surface assumed a foirly coherent consistence. 



Passing by this place ten years later I found that its aspect had changed ; 

 terraces of small houses had sprung up, mushroom-like, on the unsavoury founda- 

 tion of heterogeneous refuse. Still more recentlj' I notice that these in their turn 

 have been swept away, and now a large factorj', wherein some of the most 

 ingenious productions of human skill are constructed, occupies the site of the 

 original waste. 



This commonplace history is, in a sense, a parable in which is set forth the 

 past, present, and possible future of that accumulation of lore in reference to 

 humanity to which is given the name Anthropology, and for the studj' of which 

 this Section of our Association is set apart. At first nothing better than a heap of 

 heterogeneous facts and fancies, the leavings of the historian, of the adventurer, 

 of the missionary, it has been for long, and, alas ! is still, the favourite playground 

 of dilettanti of various degrees of seriousness. But upon this foundation there ia 

 rapidly rising a more comely superstructure, fairer to see than the original chaos, 

 but still bearing marks of transitoriness and imperfection, and I dare hazard the 

 prediction that this is destined in the course of time to give place to the more solid 

 fabric of a real science of anthropology. 



We cannot yet claim that our subject is a real science in the sense in which 

 that name is applied to those branches of knowledge, founded upon ascertained 

 laws, which form the subjects of most of our sister Sections ; but we can justify 

 our separate existence, in that we are honestly endeavouring to lay a definite and 

 stable foundation upon which in time to come a scientific anthropology may be 

 based. 



The materials with which we have to do are fully as varied as were those in 

 my illustration, for we as anthropologists take for our motto the sentiment of 

 Chremes, so often quoted in this Section, hu7nani 7iihil a nobis alienum putamus, 

 and they are too often fully as fragmentary. The bones, weapons, and pottery 



