PREFACE.

THE following pages consist chiefly of a series of essays, contributed at various times to the Westminster Review and the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, revised and corrected, and with much original matter added in accordance with the latest utterances of men of science.

Whatever shortcomings may be discovered in the volume must be attributed to want of skill in the writer rather than to lack of interest in the subject matters treated, which, being selected from what may be looked upon as the romance of Anthropology, cannot fail to attract readers who have any taste for the prehistoric development of the human race, as illustrated not only by the discoveries of archæologists in the graves of long-forgotten races; but also by the manners and customs of the savages of to-day, who may be held to continue the slow march of the ancient world, in the rear of the whirl and confusion of the army of modern progressionists.

The crowded audiences which always assemble in the Anthropological Section, at the meetings of the British

Association, seem to prove that Anthropology, which has never had as large a number of disciples in Great Britain as in other European countries and in America, would become a popular study here also if better understood. My object, therefore, in the present volume has been so to popularize my subjects as to attract my readers to study for themselves those deeper works from which I have culled the facts I have brought together, and from which I have drawn my own conclusions, not always in accord with those of the authors I have quoted, but which I would yet fain hope may be found by my critics to be neither puerile nor unreasonable. Truth," says the proverb, "lies at the bottom of a well," and it is only by stirring up the waters of controversy that the goddess may be brought to the surface.

The quaint tales and legends, the archaic monuments, the weapons, implements, and works of art, which appear alike, and yet unlike, in so many widely-separated countries, and among diverse races, I look upon as the scattered fossils of Anthropology, from which may be built up some of the unknown histories of the human race, even as the solitary Moa bone served in the hand of the skilful comparative anatomist to build up that extinct bird of New Zealand. Whether I have succeeded in unearthing and placing in position any of these buried fossils so as to add in any appreciable degree to the skeleton of the unknown man of pre-historic times

I must leave to the judgment of my readers. There are, however, numerous anthropological fossils of great importance which I have not ventured to touch. From some of these, chiefly linguistic, has been built up the theory which is at present occupying so much attention as to the original home of the Aryans, a theory which has received the qualified support of Professor Huxley, in his able article on "The Aryan Question and Prehistoric Man," in the Nineteenth Century for November. Canon Isaac Taylor's book on the subject is so full of interest, and so accessible, that I do not feel myself called upon to enter upon a subject which can only be properly treated by professed philologists.

I have also omitted all detailed account of the distinctions of race as regards admeasurements of the skull and various parts of the body, colour of the hair and skin of existing races, &c. &c., which although of great anthropological importance, would be out of place in the present volume.

Being anxious not to overload my text with references, I append a list of the principal works consulted, commending them to the thoughtful perusal of all whom I may succeed in interesting in the subjects here introduced to their notice.

A. W. BUCKLAND.

London, 1890.