requiring one knows not how many hundreds or thousands of years to produce a race which could adapt itself to its new environment.

It may perhaps be thought that in selecting the subject of Heredity for my address, and in treating it as I have to a large extent in its general biological aspects, I have infringed upon the province of Section D (that of Biology). But I am not prepared to admit that any such encroachment has been made. Man is a living organism with a physical structure which discharges a variety of functions, and both structure and functions correspond in many respects (though with characteristic differences) with those which are found in animals. The study of his physical frame cannot therefore be separated from that of other living beings; and the processes which take place in the one must also be investigated in the other.

The physical aspect of the question, although of vast importance and interest, yet by no means covers the whole ground of man's nature, for in him we recognize the presence of an element beyond and above his animal framework. Man is also endowed with a spiritual nature. He possesses a conscious responsibility which enables him to control his animal nature, to exercise a discriminating power over his actions, and which places him on a far higher and altogether different platform than that occupied by the beasts which perish. The kind of evolution which we are to hope and strive for in him is the perfecting of this spiritual nature, so that the standard of the whole human race may be elevated and brought into more harmonious relation with that which is holy and divine.

ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE LAST TWENTY YEARS.*

By Dr. RUDOLPH VIRCHOW, of the University of Berlin.
Translated by Rev. C. A. BLEISMER.

Nearly twenty years ago the foundation of our present union meeting was laid on Austrian soil. A few men attending an association of naturalists, at Innspruck in 1869, formed themselves into a separate section, which held its session in a small auditorium of the university.

Of that number my countryman, Koner, has since died, but the rest are still living, among them Karl Vogt, Professor Semper (first general secretary of the German Anthropological Society), Professor Seligman, of Vienna, and some others.

And as I see with us Count Enzenberg, the secretary of that section, there are here at least two representatives of that memorable day.

Every member of that little gathering was fully convinced that Germany and Austria ought to be united in anthropological matters and that only through united work could any success be expected in anthropological investigations. A call was published for the establishment of a General German Anthropological Society, which should unite all German workers, including the German Swiss and the Germans in Austria.

At a subsequent meeting held in Mayence, in May, 1870, for the purpose of drafting a constitution, a number of Austrians participated and the articles were purposely framed in such a manner as to include German Austrians. But circumstances are frequently more powerful than the intentions of men.

The current of opinion during the period following this meeting was contrary to our purpose, which represented ideas based upon an unprejudiced consideration of events. Previously, in 1869, there had been formed an Anthropological Society at Berlin, the first one in Germany, also a separate society at Vienna, but only the Berlin society became a branch of the General German Society. It seemed impossible for some time to find any direct point of contact with the society at Vienna,

* Opening address delivered before the twentieth general meeting of the German Anthropological Association (of Germany and Austria) in Vienna, August 5, 1889. (From the Correspondenz-Blatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, xx. Jahrgang, No. 9, September, 1889, pp. 89–100.)

although there was no variance between them and us. Individual members-as I most gratefully admit, (among whom our president, Baron von Andrian, is one,) often expressed their regret at our lack of union. In 1881, the first attempt to bring about a union was made when the German and the Austrian anthropologists held their general meetings successively at Regensburg and Salzburg, both attending each other's session. Since that time the idea of union gained strength until it was realized in our present joint meeting; and may a sentiment of union be developed that shall complete the work which we began.

You all understand that this question of nationality is a very important one in an anthropological sense.

We must always start from what is known; our question is that of habitat. And here we differ from the zoologist, who is only to a limited degree concerned about this question. Not until we know whence a person came and where he lived is he a legitimate subject of anthropo logical investigation. This holds true also with respect to a human skull. An unknown skull may be momentarily of some interest, but from a scientific stand-point it is of no importance until its habitat has been determined.

Τις πόθεν εἰς ἀνδρῶν is a question which not merely concerns our every day life, but is an important one for the anthropologist. It is a very difficult matter to make collectors of skulls understand that not merely skulls, but skulls of persons or tribes are needed, that can be identified as regards their habitat. Then only are they of any anthropological value to the investigator.

A skull per se is of very little account to us, but when its nationality is known it begins to exist, so to speak. We must not forget moreover that our conceptions of nationality are largely based upon our present relationships, and that these become of less value the farther back we go, and that they are of no value at all when we reach the period in which clearly defined nationalities are not known.

Every evidence of nationality ceases in pre-historic times; it is then a mere abstraction. There nationality has to be made up and a nomenclature adopted which can be at best only a designation for a certain period, valueless in itself and unintelligible to future times. To be sure, to talk about a race of Cannstatt or of Cro-Magnon may sound very learned, but I hope that ere long such a phraseology will be discarded.

At present questions of nationality can be settled only with great difficulty. We may be sure of being tolerably successful, if we select some island of the Pacific Ocean. There nationality is fully developed and its people are tangible; every one of them is easily recognized as belonging to a distinct nationality, and our experience is similar to that of the geologist who can construct a whole species from a single, or at most only from a few skulls of animals, or who at any rate can determine from a single skull the craniology of the whole species. It would be very

pleasant to be able to trace the history of a whole tribe whenever a skull is found, but unfortunately we are too often confronted with such complicated variations that we lose all data for making out the nationality. But in an island of the Pacific Ocean, which possesses much more scientific interest than political importance, we find an analogy to animal races, viz: races of men, developed in circumscribed surroundings, with definite characteristics, easily pointed out, who represented a distinct type. Much to our regret this can be done only very infrequently in the case of continental tribes or nations. To determine the question of nationality with regard to a European would take many days.

Permit me to emphasize right here that we as anthropologists have little right to thrust into the foreground the idea of nationality, in a narrow sense of the word. We know that every nationality, take for instance, the German or the Slavonic, is of a composite character, and that no one can say, on the spur of the moment, from what original stock either may have been developed. We usually call the Germans blonde and the Slavonians brunette, yet just as great variations in this respect can be found among the Germans as among Slavonians. Indeed, northern, southern, eastern, and western groups of either nation present such a large number of variations that it is just as difficult to assert that the Germans came from a common stock, as is the case with the Slavonians. Consanguinity and heredity have been urged an explanation of these differences, but it has been proven that certain Slavonic groups are more nearly related to the Germans than to their own Slavonic brethren. If we compare the blonde element among the Poles and Galicians with the brunette Slavonians of the south, it is found that they not only differ with respect to color of skin, of eyes, and of hair, but also in a very marked degree in the structure of their skull; so much so indeed that the former show a greater affinity to our German tribes than to the Slavonian. In Northern Germany matters are still more intricate. There, in some of the old burial fields, skulls are found which might be called Germanic, were it not that they clearly possess Slavonic added character, so that for the present at least these fields must be considered Slavonic burial places. To make the case still stronger, there are found in the famous grave-rows (Reihengräber) of the period of the Franks or of the Merovingians, with their characteristic ornaments and weapons, skulls which very distinctly present the peculiarities of the Germanic type. Corresponding to these in an anthropological sense, a large number of graves have been opened in the east of Germany where similar types of skulls are found; but these are lacking in Frankish peculiarities and are characterized by Slavonic marks. Greater contrasts than these can not be imagined.

It is at present an impossibility and probably will be for all times to trace back to a common type either the Slavonic or the German tribes. When we compare the short and thick skulls of our Alemannic brethren with the long and low skulls of the Frisians and Hanoverians, it is evi

dent that they differ more from each other than is the case with skulls of certain Slavonic or German tribes. Consequently we must give up the idea of an original consanguinity in respect to each one of the historic nationalities. We do not possess as yet any known conclusive series of observations by means of which it can be demonstrated that from dolichocephalous families there have been developed brachycephalous individuals, such as we find among Slavonic or Germanic tribes. It may he possible by means of cross breeding to develop in process of time from a dolichocephalous family a brachycephalous one; but actual proof of this has not as yet been produced. Hence we are compelled to adopt as a solution the theory of "mixed races." A mixed race is one whose elements are people of different blood, not of one blood: it is one which can not appeal to a common origin but which in the course of time was made up of elements of different original races. This theory causes us, as you easily see, to attach but little importance to nationalities as such existing at present. It will be our task to determine the localities of the original elements of this mixture, and to ascertain whence came these brachycephalous and these dolichocephalous peoples. Somewhere there must be a starting point for each of these categories, since upon an anthropological map these distinctions are marked with geological clearness. This difficulty not only exists in Germany or Austria but also in Russia. What are now called Russians are made up of a very composite mass of elements, derived from the farthest parts of Asia, from Turanian and Mongolian stocks. Hence our colleagues in the East are in no less a quandary than ourselves. They too meet wide differences between north and south, east and west.

In the popular mind these questions are very easily considered to be concerned merely with a single nationality, but we must not only try to solve them in respect to one nation, but for the whole of Europe. In attempting to do this our investigations carry us further and further from a consideration of their special relation to individual nations. I may be permitted to say right here, that we are all especially interested to see such investigations carried on in this Austrian Monarchy; for Austria in its peculiar development has preserved in greater purity the remnants of old nationalities, than any other state in Europe. Everywhere else the change of former environments has gone on to a larger extent, the remains of antiquity have been crowded back so far that at present it is very difficult to make collections of the very oldest remains. We are now occupied with the establishment of a museum in Berlin for German costumes and domestic utensils; we intend to preserve in it everything that can yet be saved from destruction. In some localities the very last relic has been secured for our museum. Here and there we meet with lingering recollections of primitive days, but these can not be compared with the living realities in so many districts of Austria.

A reference to dead and living languages will make plain this con