1008 EEPOKT— 1898. 



of the Folk-lore Society by bis frank statement of conclusions at whicb he had 

 arrived, following the paths I have indicated, it was said we must fall back on the 

 evidences of Christianity. What more cogent evidence of Christiauitj^ can you 

 have than its existence ? It stands to-day as the religion which, ia most civilised 

 countries, represents that which has been found by the operation of natural laws 

 to be best suited for the present circumstances of mankind. You are a Christian 

 because you cannot help it. Turn Mohammedan to-morrow — will you stop the 

 spread of Christianity ? Your individual renunciation of Christianity will be but 

 a ripple on a wave. Civilised mankind holds to Christianity, and cannot but do so 

 till it can find something better. This, it seems to me, is a stronger evidence of 

 Christianity than any of the loose-jointed arguments I find in evidential literature. 



Upon this thorny subject I will say no more. I would not have said so much, 

 but that I wish to show that these considerations are not inconsistent with the 

 respect I entertain, and desire now as always to e.xpress, for those feelings and 

 sentiments which are esteemed to be precious by the great majority of mankind, 

 which solace them under the adversities of life and nerve them for the approach of 

 death, and which stimulate them to works of self-sacrifice and of charity that 

 have conferred untold blessings on humanity. I reverence the divine Founder of 

 Christianity all the more when 1 think of Him as one who so well ' knew what 

 was In man ' as to build upon ideas and yearnings that had grown in man's mind 

 from the earliest infancy of the race. 



To return. If continuity be the key that unlocks the receptacle where lie the 

 secrets of man's history — physical, industrial, mental, and moral ; if in each of 

 these respects the like processes are going on — it follows, as I have already said, 

 that the only satisfactory study of man is a study of the whole man. It is for 

 this reason that I ask you to take especial interest in the proceedings of one of the 

 Committees of this Section, which has adopted such a comprehensive study as the 

 guiding principle of its work — I mean the Ethnographical Survey Committee. I 

 have so often addressed this Section and the Conference of Corresponding Societies 

 on the matter, since the Committee was first appointed at the Edinburgh meeting, 

 on the suggestion of my friend Professor Iladdon, that I can hardly now refer to 

 it without repeating what has been already said or forestalling what will be said 

 when its report is presented to you, but its programme so fully realises that which 

 has been in my mind in all that I have endeavoured to say that I must make one 

 more efibrt to enlist your active interest in its work. 



The scheme of the Committee includes the simultaneous recording in various 

 districts of the physical characters, by measurement and by photography, the cur- 

 rent traditions and beliefs, the peculiarities of dialect, the monuments and other 

 remains of ancient culture, and the external history of the people. The places in 

 the United Kingdom where this can be done with advantage are such only as have 

 remained unafl'ected by the great movements of population that have occurred, 

 especially of late years. It might have been thought that such places would be 

 very few ; but the preliminary' inquiries of the Committee resulted in the formation 

 of a list of between 300 and 400. So far, therefore, as the testimony of the 

 very competent persons whose advice was sought by them is to be relied on, it is 

 evident that there is ample scope for their work. At the same time, the process 

 of migration from country to town is going on so rapidly, that every year dimi- 

 nishes the number of such places. One thinks with regret how much easier the 

 work would have been one or two or three generations ago ; but that consideration 

 should only induce us to put it oft' no longer. The work done by the lamented 

 Ur. Walter Gregor for this Committee in Dumfriesshire and other parts of Scot- 

 land is an excellent type of the way in which such work should be done. His 

 ciiUections of physical measurements and of folk-lore have been published in the 

 fourth and fifth reports of the Committee. There can be no doubt that few men 

 possess the faculty he had of drawing forth the confidence of the villagers and 

 getting them to tell him their superstitions and their old customs. He succeeded 

 in lecording from their lips not fewer than 733 items of folk-lore. They not merely 

 firm exceedingly pleasant reading, such as is perhaps not often met with in a 

 British Association Report, but they also will be found to throw considerable light 



