502 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 301. 



literary departments of other academies, as 

 well as to the members of literary institu- 

 tions and societies analogous to academies ; 

 to professors of aesthetics, of literature and 

 of history in the universities. This order 

 must be published at least every five years. 



ADDRESS OF TEE PRESIDENT OF THE AN- 



THBOPOLOGIOAL SECTION OF TEE 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



Perhaps I ought to begin by apologizing 

 for my conspicuous lack of qualification to 

 fill this chair, but I prefer, with your per- 

 mission, to dismiss that as a subject far too 

 large for me to dispose of this morning. 

 So I would beg to call your attention back 

 for a moment to the excellent address given 

 to this Section last year. It was full of 

 practical suggestions which are well worth 

 recalling: one was as to the project of a 

 bureau of ethnology for Greater Britain, 

 and another turned on the desirability of 

 founding an imperial institution to repre- 

 sent our vast colonial empire. I mention 

 these in the hope that we shall not leave 

 the government and others concerned any 

 peace till we have realized those modest 

 dreams of enlightenment. People's minds 

 are just now so full of other things that the 

 interests of knowledge and science are in 

 no little danger of being overlooked. So it 

 is all the more desirable that the British 

 Association, as our great parliament of sci- 

 ence, should take the necessary steps to 

 prevent that happening, and to keep steadily 

 before the public the duties which a great 

 and composite nation like ours owes to the 

 world and to humanity, whether civilized 

 or savage. 



The dif&culties of the position of the 

 president of this Section arise in a great 

 measure from the vastness of the field of 

 research which the Science of Man covers. 

 He is, therefore, constrained to limit his at- 

 tention as a rule to some small corner of it ; 

 and, with the audacity of ignorance, I have 



selected that which might be labeled the 

 early ethnology of the British Isles, but I 

 propose to approach it only along the pre- 

 carious paths of folklore and philology, be- 

 cause I know no other. Here, however, 

 comes a personal difficulty; at any rate, I 

 suppose I ought to pretend that I feel it a 

 difliculty, namely, that I have committed 

 myself to publicity on that subject already. 

 But as a matter of fact, I can hardly bring 

 myself to confess to any such feeling ; and 

 this leads me to mention, in passing, the 

 change of attitude which I have lived to 

 notice in the case of students in my own 

 position. Most of us here present have 

 known men who, when they had once 

 printed their views on their favorite sub- 

 jects of study, stuck to those views through 

 thick and thin, or at most limited them- 

 selves to changing the place of a comma 

 here and there, or replacing an occasional 

 and by a but. The work had then been 

 made perfect, and not a few great ques- 

 tions afiecting no inconsiderable portions 

 of the universe had been forever set at rest. 

 That was briefiy the process of getting 

 ready for posterity, but one of its disad- 

 vantages was that those who adopted it 

 had to waste a good deal of time in the 

 daily practice of the art of fencing and 

 winning verbal victories ; for, metaphoric- 

 ally speaking, 



' With many a -svhack and many a bang 

 Eough crab-tree and old iron rang. ' 



ZsTow all that, however amusing it may 

 have been, has been changed, and what 

 now happens is somewhat as follows : AB 

 makes an experiment or propounds what 

 he calls a working hypothesis ; but no 

 sooner has AB done so than CD, who is 

 engaged in the same sort of research, pro- 

 ceeds to improve on AB. This, instead of 

 impelling AB to rush after CD with all 

 kinds of epithets and insinuating that his 

 character is deficient in all the ordinary 



