888 REPOET— 1892. 



Mankind, whenever and however it may have originated, appears to us at 

 present aa an assemblage of tribes, each not necessarily homogeneous, as their 

 component elements may be derived from diverse genealogical lines of descent. 

 It is much to be regi-etted that there is not in our literature a more definite 

 nomenclature for these divisions of mankind, and that such words as race, people, 

 nationality, tribe, and type are often used indiscriminately as though they were 

 synonyms. 



In the great mass of knowledge with which we deal there are several collateral 

 series of facts, the terminologies of which should be discriminate^d. In the first 

 place there are those ethnic conditions existing now, or at any other point in time, 

 whereby the individuals of manldnd are grouped into categories of different com- 

 prehension, as clans or families, as tribes or groups of allied clans, and as nations, 

 the inhabitants of restricted areas under one political organisation. This side of 

 our subject constitutes ethnology. 



In the second place, the individuals of mankind may be regarded as the 

 descendants of a limited number of original parents, and consequently each person 

 has his place on the genealogical tree of humanity. As the successive branches 

 became in their dispersion subjected to the influences of diverse environments, they 

 have eventually differentiated in characteristics. To each of these subdivisions 

 of the phylum thus differentiated the name race may appropriately be restricted, 

 and the sum of the peculiarities of each race may be termed race-characters. 

 This is the phylogenetic side of anthropology, and its nomenclature should be 

 kept clearly separate from that of the ethnological side. The great and growing 

 literature of anthropology consists largely of the records of attempts to discover 

 and formulate these distinctive race-characters. Race and tribe may be terms of 

 equal extension, but the standpoint from which these categories are viewed is 

 essentially different in the two eases. 



There is yet a third series of names in common use in descriptive anthropology. 

 The languages in use among men are unfortunately numerous, and as the com- 

 ponent mdividuals in each community usually speak a common language, the 

 mistake is often made of confounding the tribal name with that of the tribal 

 language. Sometimes these categories are co-extensive ; but it is not always so, 

 for it is a matter of history that communities have been led to adopt new languages 

 from considerations quite independent of phylogenetic or ethnic conditions. These 

 linguistic terms should not be confoimded with the names in either of the other 

 series, for, as my learned predecessor once said in a presidential address, it is as 

 absurd to speak of an Aryan skull as it would be to say that a family spoke a 

 brachycephalic language. 



In the one clan there may be, by intermarriage, the representatives of different 

 races ; in the one nation there may be dissimilar tribes, each derived by composite 

 lines of ancestry from divergent phyla, yet all speaking the same language. 



We have an excellent illustration of the confusion resulting from this disregard 

 of precision in the case of the word Celtic, a tenn which has sometimes been 

 employed as an ethnic, sometimes as a phylogenetic, and sometimes as a linguistic 

 species. In the last-named sense, that to which I believe the use of the name 

 should be restricted, it is tlie appropriate designation of a group of cognate languages 

 spoken by peoples whose physical characters show that they are not the descendants 

 of one common phylum in the near past. There are fair-haired, long-headed 

 families in Scotland and Ireland : fair, broad-headed Bretons ; dark-haired, round- 

 headed Welshmen ; and dark-haired, long-headed people in the outer Hebrides, 

 McLeans, ' Sancho Panza type ' — men obviously of different races, who differ not 

 only in colour, stature, and skull-form, but whose traditions also point to a com- 

 posite descent, and yet all originally speaking a Celtic tongue. The use of the 

 word Celtic as if it were the name of a phylogenetic species has naturally led to 

 hopeless confusion in the attempts to formulate race-characters for the Celtic 

 skull — confusions of a kind which tend to bring physical anthropology into dis- 

 credit. Thus Eetzius characterises the Celtic crania as being dolichocephalic, and 

 compares them with those of the modern Scandinavians. Sir Daniel Wilson 

 considers the true Celtic type of skull as intermediate between the dolichocephaU 



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