Address delivered at the second annual meeting of the Anthropological Society of London / by James Hunt.

James Hunt

Date:: [1865]

Credit: Address delivered at the second annual meeting of the Anthropological Society of London / by James Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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was made by Dr. Richard King, the honorary secretary of the Ethno- logical Society, for a distinct section for ethnology, and this, although supported by Dr. Prichard and others, was negatived by the Committee of the Association. Dr. Prichard, a few years later, makes the fol- lowing observations on this point*:— “ In the meetings of the British Association alone, ethnology claims but a subordinate place in the section of Natural History. The reason assigned for this arrangement is, that the natural history of man is apart of the natural history of living creatures, and that there is an obvious propriety in referring to one division the history of all organised beings, namely, of all those beings which exist in succes- sive generations, destined one after another to rise, flourish, and decay —a lot to which are alike subjected the lords of the creation and the worms on which they tread, and the plants and animals which they consume for their daily food. But though the natural history of man in a technical arrangement, be made a department of zoology, it is easy to show that the main purport of ethnological inquiries is one distinct from zoology; and the reference of both these subjects to one section of the British Association, can only have arisen from ! inadvertence.” These remarks were made in 1847, and Dr. Prichard’s death at the end of the following year unfortunately prevented him from again ad- vocating the claims of his favourite science to a special section. The students of ethnology were at that time very few, and the death of their chief rendered any opposition on their part to being entirely extin- Sguished quite out of the question. The destroying angel who anni- hilated the Ethnological sub-section was Sir Roderick Murchison, who takes honour to himself for this exploit. Addressing the British Association at Oxford in 1860, he said :— “It fell to my lot, in 1858, to offer a few words to the geo- graphers and ethnologists who were assembled at Leeds. I then explained to the assembled members the satisfaction I felt in pro- posing, at the Edinburgh meeting in 1850, the formation of a separate section for geography and ethnography, to represent the letter E, left vacant by our medical associates who had seceded to found an association of their own. Until that year geography had been attached exclusively to the geological section, in which, in truth, it was submerged by the numerous memoirs of my brethren of the b rocks.” Now, Sir Roderick did not like geography to be submerged in geology, and yet he felt no compunction in submerging ethno- * Anniversary Address, 1847, Trans, of Ethno. tloc., vol. i, p. 301.

Address delivered at the second annual meeting of the Anthropological Society of London / by James Hunt.

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