634 PROGRESS AND POSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 



inconsistent with the respect I entertain, and desire now as always to 

 express for those feelings and sentiments which are esteemed to he 

 precious by the great majority of mankind, which solace them under 

 the adversities of life and nerve them for the approach of death, and 

 which stimulate them to works of self-sacrifice and of charity that 

 have conferred untold blessings on humanity. I reverence the divine 

 founder of Christianity all the more when I think of Him as one who so 

 well "knew what was in man" as to build upon ideas and yearnings 

 that had grown in man's mind from the earliest infancy of the race. 



To return. If continuity be the key that unlocks the receptacle 

 where lie the secrets of man's history — physical, industrial, mental, 

 and moral; if in each of these respects the like processes are going 

 on — it follows, as I have already said, that the only satisfactory study 

 of man is a study of the whole man. It is for this reason that I ask you 

 to take especial interest in the proceedings of one of the committees of 

 this section, which has adopted such a comprehensive study as the 

 guiding principle of its work — I mean the ethnographical survey com- 

 mittee. I have so often addressed this section and the Conference of 

 Corresponding Societies on the matter, since the committee was first 

 appointed at the Edinburgh meeting, on the suggestion of my friend, 

 Professor Haddon, that I can hardly now refer to it without repeating 

 what has been already said or forestalling what will be said when its 

 report is presented to you, but its programme so fully realizes that 

 which has been in my mind in all that I have endeavored to say that I 

 must make one more effort to enlist your active interest in its work. 



The scheme of the committee includes the simultaneous recording in 

 various districts of the physical characters, by measurement and by 

 photography, the current traditions and beliefs, the peculiarities of 

 dialect, the monuments and other remains of ancient culture, and the 

 external history of the people. The places in the United Kingdom 

 where this can be done with advantage are such only as have remained 

 unaffected by the great movements of population that have occurred, 

 especially of late years. It might have been thought that such places 

 would be very few, but the preliminary inquiries of the committee 

 resulted in the formation of a list of between 300 and 400. So far, 

 therefore, as the testimony of the very competent persons whose advice 

 was sought by them is to be relied on, it is evident that there is ample 

 scope for their work. At the same time, the process of migration from 

 country to town is going on so rapidly that every year diminishes the 

 number of such places. One thinks with regret how much easier the 

 work would have been one or two or three generations ago; but that 

 consideration should only induce us to put it off no longer. The work 

 done by the lamented Dr. Walter G-regor for this committee in Dum- 

 friesshire and other parts of Scotland is an excellent type of the way 

 in which such work should be done. His collections of physical meas- 

 urements and of folklore have been published in the fourth and fifth 

 refjorts of the committee. There can be no doubt that few men pos- 



