864 REPORT—1899, 
' and the vast number of races either subject to out rule o¥ who look to us for 
guidance and protection. The number may be variously computed according to 
the bias, philological or physical, of the observer, but it will not be contested that 
our opportunities are without precedent in history, nor that they greatly exceed 
those of any existing nation. That being so, it may not be useless to see how far 
these opportunities are utilised, While it will not be denied that the Indian 
Government and the Governments of some of our colonies have done excellent 
work in the direction of anthropological research and publication, and that 
exhaustive reports from our colonial officials are frequently received and after- 
wards entombed in parliamentary papers, yet if is equally clear that work of this 
kind is not a part of our administrative system, but rather the protest of the intelli- 
gent official mind against the monotony of routine. The material, the opportunity, 
as well as the intelligence and will to use both, are already in existence, and all 
that is now wanted is that the last should be encouraged and the work be done on 
a systematic plan, and, as far as may be, focussed on some centre where it may be 
_available for present and future use. It was for this end that I ventured to bring 
before the British Association at the Liverpool meeting a scheme for the establish- 
ment of a central Bureau of Ethnology for Greater Britain. Frequent appeals 
had been made to me by officials of all kinds in distant parts of the Empire to tell 
them what kind of research work they could most usefully undertake, and it 
seemed a pity not to reduce so much energy and goodwill into a system. Hence 
the Bureau of Ethnology. The Council of the Association, on the recommenda- 
tion of the Committee, invited the Trustees of the British Museum to undertake 
the working of the Bureau; this they have accepted, with the result that if the 
_ Treasury will grant the small yearly outlay it will be under my own supervision. 
If I had foreseen this ending I might have hesitated before starting a hare the 
chasing of which will be no sinecure. 
It was considered necessary, before attempting to begin the work of the Bureau 
by communicating with commissioners and other officials in the various Colonies 
and Protectorates, to lay the matter before Lord Salisbury and to invite his 
approval of the scheme. The whole correspondence will appear in the Report of 
the present meeting, but I may be pardoned for quoting one paragraph of the 
circular letter from the Foreign Office to the several African Protectorates, It is 
as follows: ‘ Lord Salisbury is of opinion that Her Majesty’s officers should be 
encouraged to furnish any information desired by the Bureau, so far as their duties 
will allow of their doing so, and I am to request you to inform the officers under 
your administration accordingly.’ When it is remembered that this is strictly 
official phraseology, its tenor may be considered entirely satisfactory, and there can 
be little doubt that other departments of the Government will recognise the utility 
of the Bureau in the same liberal spirit. Thus we shall have within a short time 
an organisation which will systematically gather the records of the many races 
which are either disappearing before the advancing white man, or, what is equally 
fatal from the anthropological point of view, are rapidly adopting the white man’s 
habits and forgetting their own. 
The Bureau of Ethnology, however, will only perform a part of the task that 
has to be done. While there is no doubt of the value of knowledge as to the 
religious beliefs and customs of existing savages, it is surely of equal importance 
that anthropological and ethnological collections should be gathered together with 
the same energy. The spear of the savage is, in fact, far more likely to be 
replaced by the rifle than is his religion to give way to ours. Thus the spear 
will disappear long before the religion is forgotten. It may be said that we have 
collections of this kind in plenty, and it is true that in the British Museum, at 
Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool, and Salisbury, there are indeed excellent 
collections of ethnology, while at the College of Surgeons and the Natural History 
Museum there are illustrations of physical anthropology in great quantity. 
Whatever might be the result if all these were brought together, there can be no 
question that no one of them meets the requirements of thetime. Here also there 
is a want of a system that shall at once be worthy of our Empire and so devised 
as to serve the ends of the student. Where, if not in England, should be found 
