53b4 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
The myths selected were those dealing with the war between birds and fishes. 
These were supplemented by the native account of the Palolo (Palolo viridis), 
showing the way in which the Samoans calculate the time when that annelid 
appears. The paper was intended to show the development of the mind of men, 
in primitive conditions of life, from ‘animatism’ to ‘animism,’ and onwards 
again to ‘natural science,’ after many years of close observation of natural 
phenomena. 
4. The Ancient Inhabitants of Egypt and the Sudan. By Professor 
G. Exuiot Suiru, M.A., M.D., F.B.S. 
This communication dealt with new material bearing upon the racial charac- 
teristics of two groups of the earliest people, the most northern and the most 
southern, whose remains have yet come to light in the Nile Valley—(a) one a 
series of Protodynastic skeletons obtained from various sources within forty 
miles of Cairo, and (b) another set recovered by Dr. Reisner near Merowe, many 
hundreds of miles further south, in the Sudan. 
(a2) The evidence of the first series supplements the information which the 
author has laid before the Association from time to time during recent years, and 
seems to indicate that the alien element in the Protodynastic population of Lower 
Egypt can be recognised as early as the time of the First Dynasty. It raises 
the possibility that from an even more remote period the people of the Delta 
may have been intermingling with a foreign population not belonging to the 
Brown Race. Moreover, the general diffusion of alien traits in the people of 
Memphis by the time of the Second Dynasty and the complete gradation of 
types intermediate between the typical Proto-Egyptian of Upper Egypt and the 
Syrian of Western Asia suggests a long process of intermingling of these two 
peoples in Lower Egypt before that time. 
(b) The interesting material from the Sudan was obtained last year by Dr. 
Reisner at the southern end of the Kerma basin. It belongs to the Hyksos 
period, when large numbers of Egyptians emigrated into the Sudan. The 
skeletons obtained from the better tombs closely resemble those of typical 
Egyptians of the upper class, such as commonly occur in Upper Egypt from 
about the time of the VIth Dynasty onwards. But many of the other skeletons 
conform to the Proto-Egyptian and Middle Nubian (C group) types. Although 
none of the skeletons exhibit pronounced negroid traits, the majority of them 
bear indubitable evidence of some negro admixture, though in all cases it has 
affected the Egyptian or Nubian features only to a very slight degree. 
5. A Plea for Systematic Hthnological Research in Australia. 
By W. D, Camper. 
6. A Fundamental Problem of Religious Sociology. 
By B. Mauinowskx1, Ph.D. 
There are certain questions of principle in every branch of science which 
cannot be passed over in any comprehensive and thorough treatment of the 
subject, and upon the answer of which the further course of inquiry essentially 
depends. 
Such questions are, as a rule, the most difficult to settle, because only an 
overwhelming amount of evidence gathered with the very problem in view 
allows of an unequivocal answer. In anthropology the mutual co-operation of 
the theorist and of the field-worker is essential in all such cases. 
A question of this type presents itself at the outset in anthropological investi- 
gations of religion. Is there a sharp and deep cleavage between religious and 
profane matters among primitive peoples? Or, in other words: Is there a 
pronounced dualism in the social and mental life of the savage, or, on the 
contrary, do the religious and non-religious ideas and activities pass and shade 
into each other in a continuous manner? ‘ 
This question is of utmost importance for the general theory of religion. 
