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Though the Universities have thus been definite enough in their action where 
the authority is vested in them, it is needless to say that their representations 
to Governments have met with varying success, and so far they have not 
produced much practical result. But it is as well to note here that a precedent 
for the preliminary anthropological training of probationers in the Colonial 
Civil Service has been already set up, as the Government of the Sudan has 
directed that every candidate for its services shall go through a course of 
anthropology at Oxford or Cambridge. In addition to this, the Sudan Govern- 
ment has given a grant to enable a competent anthropologist from London to 
run a small scientific survey of the peoples under its administration. The Assam 
Government has arranged its ethnographical monographs on the lines of the 
British Association’s ‘ Notes and Queries’ with much benefit to itself, and it is 
believed that the Burma Government will do likewise. 
Speaking in this place to such an audience as that before me, and encouraged 
by what has already been done elsewhere, I cannot think that Il can be mistaken 
in venturing to recommend the encouragement of the study of anthropology 
to the University of such a city as Birmingham, which has almost unlimited 
interests throughout the British Empire. For it should be remembered that 
anthropological knowledge is as useful to merchants in partibus in dealing with 
aliens as to administrators so situated. Should this suggestion bear fruit, and 
should it be thought advisable some day to establish a School of Anthropology 
in Birmingham, 1 would also venture to point out that there are two require- 
ments preliminary to the successful formation of almost any school of study. 
These are a library and a museum ad hoc. At Oxford there is a well known 
and well conducted anthropological museum in the Pitt-Rivers Collection, and 
the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Cambridge contains collections 
of the greatest service to the anthropologist. Liverpool is also interesting itself 
in such matters. The Royal Anthropological Institute is forming a special 
library, and both that Institute and the University of London have the benefit 
ot the splendid collections of the British Museum and of the Horniman Museum 
readily accessible. ‘lhe libraries at Oxford and Cambridge are, I need hardly 
say, of world-wide fame. At all these places of learning, then, these requisites 
for this department of knowledge are forthcoming. 
It were almost superfluous to state why they are requisites. Every student 
requires, not only competent teachers to guide him in his particular branch of 
study, but also a library and a museum close at hand, where he can find the 
information he wants and the illustration of it. Where these exist, thither it 
will be found that students will flock. Birmingham possesses peculiar facilities 
for the formation of both, as the city has all over the Empire its commercial 
representatives, who can collect the required museum specimens on the spot. 
The financial labours also of those who distribute these men over Greater Britain, 
and indeed all over the world, produce the means to create the library and the 
school, and their universal interests provide the incentive for securing for those 
in their employ the best method of acquiring a knowledge of men that can be 
turned to useful commercial purpose. Beyond these suggestions I will not 
pursue this point now, except to express a hope that this discourse may lead to 
a discussion thereon before this meeting breaks up. 
Before I quit my subject I would like to be somewhat insistent on the fact 
that, though I have been dwelling so far exclusively on the business side, as it 
were, of the study of anthropology, it has a personal side as well. I would like 
to impress once more on the student, as I have often had occasion to do already, 
that whether he is studying of his own free will or at the behest of circum- 
stances, there is hardly any better hobby in existence than this, or one that 
can be ridden with greater pleasure. It cannot, of course, be mastered in a day. 
At first the lessons will be a grind. ‘Then, until they are well learnt, they are 
irksome, but when fullness of knowledge and maturity of judgment are 
attained, there is, perhaps, no keener sense of satisfaction which human beings 
can experience than that which is afforded by this study. Its range is so 
wide, its phases so very many, the interests involved in it so various, that it 
cannot fail to pleasantly occupy the leisure hours from youth to full manhood, 
and to be a solace, in some aspect or other, in advanced life and old age. 
The processes of discovery in the course of this study are of such interest 
