408 



Election of Officers.— The following officers were elected for 1923-24: — 

 President, R. H. PuUeine, M.B. ; Vice-Presidents, R. S. Rogers, M.A., M.D., 

 and Sir Douglas Mawson, D.Sc, B.E., F.R.S.,; Hon. Treasurer, B. S. Roach; 

 Hon. Editor, Professor Walter Howchin, F.G.S. ; Members of Council, 

 Professor T. Brailsford Robertson and A. M. Lea, F.E.S. ; Hon. Auditors, 

 W. C. Hackett and H. Whitbread. 



The Retiring President then gave his address, illustrated by lantern slides, 

 on 



"THE PIGMY RACES OF THE WORLD." 



In view of the public interest that has been awakened of late years in the 

 Pigmies, as a distinctive type, I have thought that perhaps a brief statement of 

 our present knowledge of this interesting people might not be found unaccept- 

 able ; I have, therefore, taken this subject for my Anniversary Address. 



Historically, there is in Egyptian records ample evidence that the Pigmies 

 were known to the Nile peoples, and were kept at their courts as curiosities. 

 The actual place where they came from was also known, according to Brugsch 

 ("History of Egypt," vol. 1, page 114), as the Land of Punt, or (?) Somali 

 Land. The Greeks knew them as a distant legendary people. It was Herodotus 

 who gave them the name, Pigmy, after a Greek measurement, equivalent to 

 about 14 inches. Von Luschan, in 1883, recommended this term for anthro- 

 pological use, in the place of dwarf, etc., to denote small races. It is strange 

 that, in recent times, Gibbon, in 1859, regarded the Pigmies as legendary. 



Du Chaillu was the first to record Equatorial Pigmies, in Gaboon, in 1867. 

 followed by Schweinfurth, in the Ituri Forest, in 1870. After this they are 

 frequently recorded, and a large literature has grown up around them, Stuhlmann 

 and Casati (both with Emin Pasha), Livingstone, Stanley, Le Roy, and Sir H. 

 H. Johnston being the principal early ones. It was while studying the Pigmies 

 that Johnston made the discovery of the Okapi. People had been wondering 

 where the natives got their beautiful zebra skin belts. It was Johnston, with 

 the help of the Pigmies, who found out the secret. This, more than anything 

 else, brought the little people into notice. Stuhlmann had by 1893 taken two 

 Pigmy women to Europe, where they excited much curiosity, and were the 

 only genuine ones seen up to that time, although alleged African Pigmies had 

 been living in Austria and Italy. In 1905, six Pigmies from the Ituri (one 

 a half-breed) were taken to Europe by J. J. Harrison. Dr. Elliot Smith, at 

 that time Professor of Anatomy in Cairo, was able to examine them during 

 their stay in that city (see "Lancet," August 12, 1905). Afterwards they 

 passed on to London, where they remained several months on exhibition, and 

 finally they were shown in other European cities, including Berlin, where they 

 were exhibited before the Anthropological Society, and formed the subject of 

 an interesting paper by Von Luschan (Z. fiir Eth., 38, 1906). 



Barns, in his "Wonders of the Eastern Congo." 1922, gives an interesting 

 and familiar account of their country. He was not the first who subjected the 

 Pigmies to the cinematograph, for Shattuck and others, sent out by the American 

 Museum of I^^atural History and American Universities in 1919-20, had taken 

 much pains in recording the Pigmies and their dwellings and dances on the 

 film, and this, I think, was the film that was shown in Australia. 



Barns records that the Ituri Forest, the home of the Pigmies in Central 

 Africa, is not as bad to travel in as is often reported, but he went along the 

 Belgian Government road with rest houses provided at intervals. All travellers 

 agree that once oflf the beaten track the Ituri Forest is about as difficult of 

 penetration as any the earth presents. Not only is its inherent density beyond 

 description, but the scandent plants, fallen trees, and rank undergrowth, together 

 with animal pests, make it quite impenetrable, in many places, to the European 



