1900.] Annual Address 4& 



is why I want to count you now, and if you don't come iu and let me do 

 it the Queen will lose her bet and jonv faces will be blackened for 

 ever.*' In either case the manoeuvre was successful ; the tribesmen 

 returned to their villages nnd tlie Census went off without a hitch. 

 But the discussion wliich ended in this happy result would have been 

 altogether impossible but for the friendly relations vvliich had Ijcen 

 already established on the common ground of ethnography. 



I have taken my illustration from Census but a dozen other 

 branches of official business would have served my purpose equally 

 well. Take famine for example. Different tribes and different castes 

 feel the stress of scarcity in different ways ; they require different 

 treatment, and some of the most conspicuous failures of our famine 

 administration in the past have been due to ignorance of the usages 

 and traditions of the people with whom we had to deal. 



Under the head of anthropometry the British Association wish 

 that the opportunity of the Census may be taken " to collect physical 

 measurements, particularly of the Dravidian tribes, and of the Rajputs 

 and Jats of Rajputana and the Eastern Panjab, Such data will be of 

 the greatest service, in throwing light on the important and difficult 

 problem of the origin of these tribes and their relation with the Yuechi 

 jind other Scythian races." 



As I am responsible for having introduced anthropometry into India 

 under the guidance of the late Sir William Flower and Professor Paul 

 Topinard of Paris, I should like to say a few words about the history 

 of the method of observation now known by that uncomfoi table name. 

 The idea of applying instruments of precision to the measurement of 

 the human body was familiar to the Egyptians and the Creeks, both of 

 whom appear to have made extensive experiments with the object of 

 arriving at a ' canon ' or ideal type showing the proportions which 

 various parts of the body should bear to the entire figure and to each 

 other. Such canons were usually expressed either in terms of a pai ti- 

 cular member of which the rest were supposed to be multiples, or in 

 fractional parts of I he entire stature. Thus the Egyptian canon, 

 according to Lepsins, is based on the length of the middle finger and 

 this measure is supposed to be contained nineteen times in the full 

 stature, three times in the head and neck, eight times in the arm, 

 and so foith. The Greek canon on the other hand, as restored by 

 Quetelet, expresses the limbs and other dimensions in thousandth parts 

 of the entire stature. Concerning this canon a curious story is told by 

 Topinard, not without interest in its bearings upon the relations of 

 Egyptian and Creek art. In 1866 the eminent French anthropologist, 

 M. Paul Broca, was asked oti behalf of M. Fock, who was engaged in 



