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Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



friends and fellow-townsmen. The monotony was broken by a few visits 

 to the Continent and one to Australia. In 1910 he published a delightful 

 and informing autobiography, entitled ' Memories of Eighty Years,' which 

 should be read by every anthropologist as it throws many sidelights on the 

 founders of the science and incidents in its history. Dr. Beddoe died on 

 July 19, 1911, in the historic old house called the Chantry, at Bradford-on- 

 Avon, where he had resided for ten years. 



Dr. Beddoe's life roughly corresponds with the modern development of 

 anthropology, and naturally he came into personal contact or entered into 

 correspondence with most of those whose names are held in honour by 

 students. The majority of anthropologists were then measuring skulls and 

 exercising their ingenuity in devising new chords, arcs and angles, and the 

 instruments wherewith to measure them, the heads of living individuals 

 of diverse races being treated as far as possible in a similar manner. The 

 shrewd Bristol doctor, who early in his medical career had applied his 

 clinical training to the observation of the living, had stored his memory and 

 note-books with observations of the physical and psychical characteristics of 

 various races and peoples; though he made various investigations in 

 craniology and osteology, mainly of the old inhabitants of these islands, 

 his chief claim to fame will be as the pioneer and chief exponent of what 

 may be termed " observational anthropology." It was he who first made 

 statistical investigations upon the colour of the hair and eyes of European 

 peoples. Owing to the observations of numerous Continental anthropologists 

 on large numbers of conscripts and other groups of people we now have very 

 definite information concerning the pigmentation and other characters of 

 several European countries. Dr. Beddoe's data were compiled partly from 

 statistics obtained from the ' Hue arm Cry,' referring mainly to deserters from 

 the army, and partly from his own observations, for the making of which he 

 devised a very simple method. The main results of his investigations on the 

 physical characters of the British people will be found in 'The Baces of 

 Britain : a Contribution to the Anthropology of Western Europe,' 1885, which 

 still remains the only monograph on the subject. The book is an expansion 

 of the memoir on ' The Origin of the English Nation,' for which he won in 

 1867 the prize of 100 guineas offered by the Council of the Welsh National 

 Eisteddfod for the best essay on that subject. In 1891 Dr. Beddoe delivered 

 the Khind Lectures in Edinburgh, taking as his subject * The Anthropological 

 History of Europe.' They were published in 1893 in a small volume which 

 cannot now be obtained. The treatment of the subject was less detailed and 

 statistical than that of ' The Races of Britain,' but it constituted a valuable 

 sketch of the physical anthropology of Europe, indeed it remained for 

 several years the only one in the English language. A bibliography of 

 Dr. Beddoe's papers and memoirs will be found in 'Man,' October, 1911, 

 p. 152. 



John Beddoe, M.D., LL.D., E.B.S., F.E.C.P.L., was Honorary Professor of 

 Anthropology in the University of Bristol ; Ofncier de l'lnstruction Publique 



