Sept. 14, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



301 



appear adorning the necks of monarchs on the sculptured slabs 

 brought by Layard from Assyria. 



There is also a melon-shaped bead of various materials, very 

 widely distributed, being found in ancient graves in Mexico, as well 

 as in Assyria and all over Europe. 



Many peculiar glass beads are found in Ireland, resembling those 

 of Egypt and Greece, although perhaps of native manufacture copied 

 from older types, and it may be fairly said that the history of neck- 

 laces is the history of commercial intercourse both in prehistoric and 

 in modern times. 



Major C. R. Conder, R.E., communicated a paper on The 

 Eatly Races of Westei n Asia. 



Mr. J. Theodore Bent discoursed on Discoveries in Asia 

 Minor. 



A note on The Definition of a Nation was read by Mr. J. Park 

 Harrison, who said that he did not propose to go into the archaic 

 meaning of the word " Nation," but simply to elicit an opinion as to 

 the growing misuse of the teim at the present day. He referred to the 

 definitions by Johnson, Todd, and Latham, and also to that by Dr. 

 Worcester, in the American Dictionary of 18S1. They all, excepting 

 Todd, omit any reference to race or language. As regards language, 

 it is admitted by ethnologists that it is no test of race. Numeious 

 populations are known to have entirely given up their own tongue 

 and adopted the language of their conquerors. This was so with 

 the earliest races in Great Britain and Ireland, when subjugated by 

 the Kelts ; whilst as instances of voluntary change of language, the 

 Scandinavian people in Ireland, who at the time of the Conquest, 

 were found to be a third of the entire population, learnt Celtic, and 

 styled themselves "Irish," an example subsequently followed by 

 the earlier English settlers in Munster and other parts of Ireland. 



The definition of the term nation in the dictionary of the French 

 Academy also omits race and language, and is by far the best, and 

 possesses the greatest authority. It is this — " The entire population 

 born or naturalised in a country, and living under the same govern- 

 ment." This definition applies to England as well as France, both 

 of which countries contain a population composed of four different 

 races, none of whom by themselves are, or ever were sufficiently 

 numerous in either country to constitute a nation. 



There is consequently no Saxon, Danish, Keltic, or Iberian 

 nationality in the British Isles. The several races were merely off- 

 shoots of great nations. Their proper nationality was lost when 

 they separated from the parent stocks — very much as individual 

 emigrants lose their foimer nationality when they obtain letters of 

 naturalisation in a foreign country. 



Sir John Lubbock said it was convenient to speak of the people 

 of our country as English, but as a matter of fact they were an ex- 

 tremely composite race. In different parts the population was made 

 up of elements in very different proportions. The East of England 

 was ethnologically similar to the East of Scotland rather than to 

 the West of England, and the West of Ergland was ethnologically 

 similar to the West of Scotland rather than to the East of England. 

 In considering the qualifications of the race inhabiting these islands 

 they found some were more Saxon, some more Celtic, others more 

 Iberian in blood, but there was something in which the people of 

 those islands differed from the Saxons, Celts, or Iberians of the 

 Continent, and the reason of this was that they came in very small 

 boats, and without women, and men of the tribe not unnaturally 

 intermarried with the women of the island. The result was they 

 had in this country a composite race entirely different from any 

 other race in the world, except in their own colonies, where they 

 lound the race reproduced. He thought all the great races of the 

 world had occupied this country with the exception of negroes, and 

 one or two other races confined to the torrid regions. They saw 

 cropping up amongst them even the Australian and the Mongolian 

 types. 



Dr. E. B. Taylor considered, as anthropologists, they wanted a 

 more accurate sen^e in which they could use the words family, clan, 

 tribe, nation, etc. 



Professor Sayce briefly dealt with the subject from a linguistic 

 point of view. 



Dr. J. Beddoe deprecated the use of the word " nation " in an an- 

 thropological sense, as the definition belonged rather to politics than 

 to anthropology, and these two they were not desirous of mixing. 



Dr. Evans and other gentlemen joined in the discussion, and the 

 President said he thought they would all agiee that a nation was 

 a people who, having a great and glorious history, had the firmness 

 and determination to maintain it. 



Mr. J. W. Bloxam, M.D., in the absence of the author, Mr. J. 

 S. Stuart Glennie, M.A., read an abstract of a paper on Pe asgians, 

 Etruscans, and Iberians; their Relations to the Fottnders of the 

 Chaldean and Egyptian Civilisations. 



A paper entitled Notes on the Hyksds, or Shepherd-Kings of Egypt, 

 was read by the Rev. Henry George Tomkins. 



In the discussion which ensued, Professor A. H. Sayce said he 

 could no longer subscribe to the opinion that between the Hyksos 

 and the Hittites there could be any racial connection. 



Tuesday, September iith. 



Lieut. -General Pitt-Rivers, F.R.S., presiding. 



The first paper read was by Miss R. W. Buckland, on King 

 Orrys Grave, Isle of Man. The authoress gave a description of 

 a visit she paid last year to the ancient monument in the Isle of 

 Man known locally as ''King Orry's Grave,'' a name which was 

 repudiated by antiquaries as misleading, but which having crept 

 into guide-books, and even into archaeological works, might perhaps 

 be retained for the present. This monument possessed certain 

 peculiarities, sufficiently uncommon to render it deserving of 

 especial notice. It did not seem easy at present to trace the plan 

 of the monument as described by Oswald, but the tall monolith 

 remained in position, and some of the chambers, especially at the 

 west end, were intact, although the covering stones were gone. The 

 authoress, who also forcibly dealt with other monuments in the Isle 

 of Mar, contended that these monuments belonged to a date far 

 earlier than that assigned to them by those who would refer them to 

 King Oiry and his successors. 



A paper on Sun-myths in Modern Hellas, by J. Theodore Bent, 

 was then read. The author said, The personification of the sun 

 amongst the peasants of modern Greece compares well with the 

 legends of classical times ; his beauty, power, and strength endow 

 him with rtgal attributes, and he is supposed at night-time to seek 

 his kingdom, and live in a palace where his mother tends upon him. 

 We have also the Sun's wife and the Sun's daughter, and can com- 

 pare the Macedonian legend of Heliojenni with the Homeric myths 

 of Perse and her children Circe and Ai'tes. The Sun, as messenger, 

 may be compared with the woids of the dying Ajax. 



The connection between sun-worship and that of the prophet 

 Elias is very marked in modern Greece. Elias looks after rain, and 

 is the Greek St. Swithin. Churches lo him are always found on 

 sites of ancient temples to Apollo. The Macedonian ceremony of 

 Perperouna has a connection with other prayers for rain offered up 

 to St. Elias. In a MS. from Lesbos this idea of union between St. 

 Elias and a power over the elements is clearly shown. Taygetus, 

 in Laconia, shows too the same connection. 



There is a connection between sun-worship and St. George; the 

 Kapa fires are lit on his day, and the connection is noticeable not 

 only in the islands, but in Macedonia, where a curious swing cere- 

 mony is performed on St. George's Day, in honour of the Sun's 

 bride having been swung up to heaven en that day. Also there is 

 a close [connection between St. George and St. John, the universal 

 clay for lighting fires, on the eve of the summer solstice. 



Mr. J. Harris Stone, M.A., F.L.S., F.C.S,, communicated a 

 paper on The Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, of which 

 the following is an abstract : The author stated that the name 

 Gnanche, though generally us d for the old inhabitants of all the 

 seven islands of the Canaiy group, should properly be only applied 

 to the ancient inhabitants of Teneriffe. The ancient inhabitants of 

 these islands were ignorant of the use of metals, and up to 1402, 

 when the conquest first began, had to all practical intents remained 

 apart from the civilisation of that day. They were a branch of the 

 great Berber race, and probably also a tribe of that white dolicho- 

 cephalic race of cromlech-builders which at a very early period 

 swept through Europe. Their connection with the ancient 

 Egyptians was noticeable in many traits and customs. The orna- 

 mentations in caves and on pottery which the author had come 

 across in his travels in each island of the archipelago were Egyptian 

 in character. The method of embalming the dead, particularly the 

 rractice of removing the entrails by a slit made with the tabona and 

 the wrappings of the corpse, was very similar to that employed by 

 the lower class of Egyptian embalmers. Though the ancient 

 inhabitants of all the islands had so much in common, there were so 

 many specific differences in their languages, manners, and customs 

 that the conclusion was almost forced upon the investigator that they 

 must originally have been peopled by more than one tribe of the 

 same race. 



The author had examined a large number of skulls in collections 

 in the islands, and found them \ery European in contour and 

 general appearance. In a large proportion of those in the collections 

 in the islands he had noticed a peculiar indentation in the frontal 

 bone, usually the left, and to his surprise found that of the twenty- 

 six skulls at the Royal College of Surgeons, no less than fifteen pos- 

 sessed this mark, and of these ten on the left frontal bone. 



The ancient inhabitants are now quite extinct as a separate race, 

 but the author in his travels had noticed several traits, manners, and 

 customs of the present inhabitan's which were clearly, in his opink n, 

 derived from the old race. The food gofio and its method of male- 



