Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 



^ 



also all the other funerary practices, and the beliefs 

 associated with them, that help to clinch the proof. The 

 special treatment of the head, the use of masks, the 

 making of stone idols, these and scores of other curious 

 customs (which have been described in detail in Haddon's 

 and Myers' admirable account [25]) might be cited. 



When I called the attention of the Anthropological 

 Section to these facts and my interpretation of them at 

 the meeting of the British Association in Melbourne, 

 Professor J. L. Myres opened the discussion by adopting 

 a line of argument which, even after four years' experience 

 of controversies of the megalith-problem, utterly amazed 

 me. " What more natural than that people should want 

 to preserve their dead ? Or that in doing so they should 

 remove the more putrescible parts ? Would not the flank 

 be the natural place to choose for the purpose ? Is it not 

 a common practice for people to paint their dead with 

 red-ochre?" It is difficult to believe that such questions 

 were meant to be taken seriously. The claim that it is 

 quite a natural thing on the death of a near relative for 

 the survivors instinctively to remove his viscera, dry the 

 corpse over a fire, scrape off his epidermis, remove his 

 brain through a hole in the back of his neck, and then 

 paint the corpse red is a sample of casuistry not unworthy 

 of a mediaeval theologian. Yet this is the gratuitous 

 claim made at a scientific meeting! If Professor Myres 

 had known anything of the history of Anatomy he would 

 have realized that the problem of preserving the body 

 was one of extreme difficulty which for long ages had 

 exercised the most civilized peoples, not only in antiquity, 

 but also in modern times. In Egypt, where the natural 

 conditions favouring the successful issue of attempts to 

 preserve the body were largely responsible for the possi- 

 bility of such embalming, it took more than seventeen 



