SECTION H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 



EVOLUTION IN MATERIAL CULTURE. 



ADDRESS BY 



H. S. HARRISON, D.Sc, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



The systematic study, and the systematic teaching, of the material side 

 of human culture receive less than their due share of attention in this 

 country. Anthropology has established a footing in several of our 

 Universities, but the need for students to enter on the study of material 

 culture by the material means of laboratory courses is scarcely yet 

 appreciated. The subject is passing through a phase from which the 

 biological sciences long ago emerged, books, lectures, demonstrations, and 

 Museum specimens in cases, being the chief sources of supply of informa- 

 tion. Sooner or later there must be organised a system by the aid of 

 which the student is not only encouraged to see, and sometimes touch, 

 the human products that are under his consideration, but is induced to 

 handle, measure, draw, and as far as possible dissect, such of the main 

 types of simple artefacts as can be spared from their more spectacular 

 Museum duties ; and also to carry out some of the methods and processes 

 which he now learns by hearsay or by reading. The hands must come 

 to the aid of the eyes and ears. Until he has done practical work of this 

 kind, he is not even able to make the best use of the specimens he views 

 through the windows of Museum cases. It is now well known that 

 ordinary glass denies a passage to some of the more active of the sun's 

 rays, but it is not so fully understood that the light of knowledge is also 

 much enfeebled by its filtering action. 



Another requisite for the furthering of the study of material culture, 

 and of Anthropology in general, in this country, is the provision of a 

 worthy setting for the unrivalled ethnographical collections which have 

 been so long marooned in Bloomsbury. If the proper study of mankind 

 is man, it is wrong to make a hole-and-corner business of it, especially in 

 the centre of a Commonwealth which boasts of a never-setting sun. 

 Ethnographically speaking, the sun has not yet risen, but it may be that 

 the gleams of light in the recent Report of the Royal Commission on 

 National Museums convey some promise of a dawn. However this may 

 be, the founding of a National Museum of Ethnography would not only 

 remove a grievous reproach to our scientific standing as a nation, and to 

 our claim to be an instructed governing people, but would have important 

 reactions upon the status and teaching of anthropology in this country, 

 with increasing benefits to colonial and other administrative services, and 

 to the alien races whose destinies they seek to guide. Whilst successive 



