On the liecent Progress of Ethnology. 67 



that it led to greater and more self-sacrificing exertions, than any 

 capable of being induced by the hopes of augmenting social acquisi- 

 tions, and was an attribute and an evidence of the non-transient part 

 of our being. 



On the Recent Progress of Ethnology, being the Annual Dis- 

 course for 1852. Read before the Ethnological Society, at the 

 Annual Meeting, on 14th May 1852. By RICHARD CuLL, 

 Esq., Honorary Secretary. Communicated by the Ethno- 

 logical Society. 



We may congratulate ourselves on the continued and in- 

 creasing interest which the educated classes of society are 

 taking in ethnological knowledge. It is now practically 

 admitted that the science of Ethnology is worthy of being cul- 

 tivated. It is true that its claims have been tardily admit- 

 ted ; but we must remember that, in commercial countries, 

 a science which does not promise to be pecuniarily profitable, 

 has not those attractions which insure the devoted attention 

 of crowds of students. 



The desire of the public for systematic knowledge of our 

 science, is evinced by the steady demand for the standard 

 works on Ethnology, by the publication of so many new ones, 

 by the popularity of lectures on the subject, and by the fre- 

 quent introduction of Ethnology as a topic of conversation in 

 general society. 



Considerable attention was drawn to our science during 

 the last year by the appearance of so many foreigners in 

 London, who came to visit the Great Exhibition. And to 

 witness the many varieties of man, assembled from every 

 region of the earth in the Crystal Palace, calmly studying 

 the productions of each other, was not the least of the won- 

 j ders of that fairy-like creation whose physical existence is 

 now about to pass away from us. 



The differentia, both physical and non-physical, in the 



j varieties of man, are so patent to observation, as not only 



to attract attention, but to rivet it, and absorb it. Some 



E2 



