43S Auden: Anthropology at the British Association. 



ferentiate one race from another, mistakes of the gravest 

 nature are being made in our administration and legislation. 

 In any wise administration of tropical regions it must be a 

 primary object to study the native institutions, to modify, and 

 to elevate them whenever it may be possible, but never to seek 

 to eradicate or supplant them. The final part of the address 

 was concerned with natural laws in relation to our own social 

 legislation. The same principles which are at work in the 

 differentiation of races are at work within each community. 

 It is an unfortunate fact that no statesman, when devising 

 schemes of education or social reform, takes into consideration 

 the doctrine of natural selection, and the survival of the fittest. 

 If the present pohcy of our legislators is adhered to, the physical 

 standard of the British citizen will deteriorate. ' Should this 

 unfortunately come to pass, it will be the result of human pride 

 refusing to appty to the human race the laws which inexorably 

 regulate all nature.' 



A paper on the Veddas, by Dr. Seligman, who has recently 

 returned from Ceylon, is an important addition to our know- 

 ledge of these people. In spite of inter-marriage and borrow- 

 ings from their Tamil neighbours, both the ' village ' Veddas 

 and ' coast ' Veddas still retain much of the clan organisation 

 of the less contaminated ' rock ' or ' jungle ' Veddas. Their 

 regard for the dead excepted, the psychical life of the Veddas 

 Is very limited. Although decorative art and personal orna- 

 ment are very crude, the cult of the worship of the spirits of the 

 departed has given rise to pantomimic dances, mostly accom- 

 panied by offerings to the dead, and the use of a ceremonial 

 arrow — an indispensable feature of many of these dances. The 

 language of the Veddas is Singalese, but they possess a few 

 words which are not obviously Singalese. 



In ' The History of Mummification in Egypt,' Prof. G. Elliot 

 Smith shewed that the pre-historic Egyptians were familiar 

 with the natural mummification or rather desiccation brought 

 about by the dryness of the soil. The idea of securing by art 

 the preservation of their dead, which was no longer attained 

 naturally when coffin or rock tomb burial became the custom, 

 probably arose in early dynastic times. The practice of em- 

 balming was almost certainly not introduced into Egypt from 

 other lands. There is some evidence of mummification in the 

 times of the earliest Pyramid builders, but the earliest bodies- 

 certainly known to have been embalmed are those of the tenth. 



Naturalist, 



