1900.] Annual Address. 39 



assist in the proposed invesfcigafcion. If it should seem desirable to 

 Her Majesty's Government, the Committee are prepared to put them- 

 selves into direct communication with the Officers of the Census, who, 

 however, the Council have reason to believe, are fully capable of carrying 

 out the details of the investigations proposed." 



It will be seen that the proposals of the Association comprise 



(1) Ethnography, or the systematic description of the historj, 



structure, traditions, and usages of tribes and castes. 



(2) Anthropometry, or physical measurements directed to the 



determination of types. 



( 3) Photography of typical members of particular castes and 



tribes and if possible of archaic industries. 

 Now as regards the first of these it is clear that nothing of the 

 nature of a comprehensive ethnographic survey can be undertaken as 

 part of the Census procedure. At the same time we may be sure that 

 on this, as on previous occasions, the Census will be the means of 

 bringing to light and placing on record much valuable knowledge which 

 would otherwise have been lost. An instance of what I mean is to be 

 found in Mr. A. VV. Davis's admirable monograph on the Nagas 

 printed as part of the Assam Census Report of 1891. I saw 

 Ml'. Davis recently in Assam, and I am glad to be able to announce that 

 he has consented to rewrite his monograph, embodying in it a quantity of 

 fresh material which he has since collected, and to publish it as a paper 

 in the Journal of this Society. To those who, like myself, have long 

 been watching with regretful eyes the passing away of primitive usage 

 with the spread of Hinduism and Islam it is pleasant to hear that this 

 process of disintegration has not as yet gone very far in Assam. Mr. 

 Davis assures me that the characteristic tribes of that Province, and 

 particularly the Nagas, have parted with none of their distinctive 

 customs, except that of cutting oif their neighbour's heads, which the 

 most enthusiastic ethnologist will hardly regret. In head- taking as 

 practised by the Nagas there seems to have been no vestige of even 

 savage chivalry. One head was as good as another, and a Naga who 

 had surpiised and mutilated a helpless child or woman considered 

 that he had earned as good a title to manhood as if he had killed a full- 

 grown warrior in fair fight. The existence of the practice has no 

 doubt helped to keep meddlesome strangers out of the hilly tracts, 

 while of the Province generally it may be said that the absence of 

 railways, the prevalence of the deadly form of malaria known as Kdla 

 Azdr, and the peculiar system of land tenures, under which there are no 

 Rajas to create hrahmottar and pirottar tenures for the benefit of their 

 spiritual advisers, have combined to deter the Brahman and the Hadji 



