negro must have been produced by a kind of retrograde movement. There are to be found such retrograde movements whether we believe it or not. If for instance a child has the nose of his grandfather we say that atavism is clearly existing, and everybody is satisfied with it. But if the six fingers are traced back to the six rays of the fins of a ray it is looked upon as an imputation. There are great difficulties connected with this subject which can be overcome only by means of heroic effort. I refer especially to the relation between atavistic peculiarities and those acquired by external circumstances. Acquired peculiarities are not atavistic, even when they prove to be hereditary. During recent years a subject has been very popular which I would recommend for further study, viz, the tailless cats. On the island of Man there is found a race of cats without tails. It has not as yet been explained whether these cats are indebted for their taillessness to a fault of their original parents and by reason of acquired characteristics are propagated in this way or whether there has intervened a disturbance in their development. As to the fact of this taillessness there is no doubt, for we find very frequently similar occurrences at other places, e. g., in Scotland, but how this heredity has taken its rise is entirely unknown. Perhaps the original mother was run over by a wagon and in this way lost her tail and then brought forth tailless cats! We do not even know how far this law of heredity extends. On ac count of this uncertainty the question becomes very complicated in its relation to human circumstances. Climate and life may influence human development, although at present no convincing reasons can be given which show such a change in respect to human beings living in our age either in their totality or as individuals through the influence of local climate prevailing at their homes. In these particulars then we are deficient to-day in our knowledge. You may possibly say that it is a strange thing to have gone backward and to know less than people knew twenty years ago. We know indeed less, but it is our pride that we have our knowledge in such a shape that we really know what we claim to understand. Twenty years ago many things were supposed to be known when people were really ignorant of them. We have made this supposed knowledge the object of scientific tests and natural science has now really taken possession of its wide domain, and we can now say that much that was formerly asserted to be true is no longer admissible. It was supposed by faith, but it never belonged to science. Now the question before us is whether it is not possible with all the auxiliaries to observation and experiment to discover a kind of plan in the natural history of man. Whether we shall ever get to a point where we can show that the home of the negro was the submerged land, which according to English zoologists was the original home of man, the so-called Lemuria, or that this place was the river Rhine, where some claim to have found the most ancient remains of primitive man;-all this we leave for our successors to decide after another twenty years shall have passed. I can only say to day we have no debts; we have not borrowed from any hypothesis-framer; we do not go about oppressed by a fear that the things to which we hold will be overturned. What we now determine has stability and will prove a foundation for further researches. We have levelled the ground so that succeeding generations may make as much use as possible of these means furnished them by us. It is our confidence based upon the recognition given us by our rulers and the sympathy of the people that in the future there will be no lack of material for work. Gentlemen, it is now our duty to go to work unitedly and with more zeal than ever before, so that all these questions may be solved which are of such importance to man for his understanding of self, and for his social and political development. Let us take hold then so that real and abiding progress may be ours. I would propose as our aim to be attained in the coming twenty years that we obtain such an insight into the anthropology of European nations as to be able to present some valuable points concerning the connection of European tribes and to succeed in showing the reasons for existing differences among them. This much I wanted to say to-day. I beg pardon for speaking so long. Anthropology is surrounded by a dense fog of traditions, a large number of them useless. Much labor is necessary to bring out its nu. cleus, just as it is the case with many of our fruits, whose little living kernel is surrounded by thick woody coverings. These germs are to be found in the field of anthropology and they must be opened up in coming days. May they find as much appreciation from a circle of such interested hearers as I see before me to-day. SCANDINAVIAN ARCHEOLOGY.* By M. INGWALD UNSET. Curator of the Archæological Museum of Christiania. Pre-historic studies made their appearance in Scandinavia before they were broached in any other country. That is easily explained. The pre-historic times of Scandinavia are only separated by a few centuries from present times and extend to the introduction of Christianity into that country about the year 1000 of our era. The Roman legions never set foot upon Scandinavian soil, and the ancient authors have only left us some very enigmatical passages upon the countries of the north. Nor do the Scandinavian traditions shed much light upon the epochs which preceded the introduction of Christianity. On the other hand, Scandinavia possesses an unusual number of pre-historic remains. It is then easy to understand that there should have been developed a peculiar science, founded upon empirical studies of the antiquities themselves, in the north rather than in other countries. DENMARK. Passing in silence the unsuccessful attempts of past centuries, the first decade of our century must be considered as the epoch of the birth of a pre-historic science in the north, whose beginnings appear in Denmark. The study of national history received in that country a strong impetus in consequence of the sentiment of nationality which awoke at that epoch in all the Germanic world. It was then that men began in Denmark to direct their attention to the national remains and to regard them as things worthy of study. In the first rank in this road must be mentioned Prof. Rasmus Nyerup, who published in 1806, an epitome of the national remains of antiquity (Oversigt over fædrelandets mindesmærker fra oldtiden), in which he proposes a plan for the establishment of a national museum. At the same time he began to make a collection of national antiquities at the library of the university of which he was the librarian. This was the germ of the pre-historic museum of Copenhagen, a museum now so vast and so famous. The state itself a short time afterwards took charge * From the Revue d'Anthropologie, May 15, 1887, 3d series, vol. II, pp. 311–332. of the interests of this museum. On May 22, 1807, the King signed a resolution constituting a royal commission of which Professor Nyerup was named secretary. This commission was charged with forming a museum for national antiquities, with watching over the preservation of the remarkable remains still existing in the country, and finally with making known to the public the value of ancient objects which are found in the soil, in order to put an end to their daily destruction. Under the active influence of this commission the collection originally founded by the private exertions of Mr. Nyerup, became so extensive that it soon gave birth to a new special science, that of pre-historic archæology. The historian Vedel-Simonsen was not a member at first, but he was one of the most zealous collaborators; he undertook for the commission several tours into the country, in order to collect antiquities and to excite interest in favor of the National Institute recently founded. In this way he had many opportunities of seeing the finds taken from the soil and the tumuli. Relying upon his own experience, he was the first to establish a fundamental principle for the classification and distribution of the chaotic mass of antiquities, the first to propose as a scientific theory the division of pre-historic times into the great paleo-ethnologic periods, that of stone, that of bronze, and that of iron. In his work entitled: Udsigt over Nationalhistoriens oldste og mærkeligste Perioder (Epitome of the most ancient and most remarkable periods of national history), the first volume of which was published in 1813, there is a chapter on the first settlement, the most ancient inhabitants, and the primitive history of the North. He discusses (pages 73-76) the tools and arms of the most remote times, and rejects the opinion then common, that the stone objects are only sacred objects. On the contrary, he pronounces them tools and arms of an epoch in which metals were still unknown, and he fortifies his opinion by citing for comparison the information about the savages of the present time who still use stone tools, and by referring to his observations during his tours undertaken for the new museum. At page 76, he gives a résumé of his ideas in the following very remarkable passage: "The arms aud utensils of the most ancient Scandinavians were in the beginning of stone and of wood. These Scandinavians then learned to work copper and even to harden it; so that there result copper axes found in the soil, and lastly (as it seems) iron. So from this point of view the history of their civilization might be divided into an age of stone, an age of copper, and an age of iron. These ages were not however separated from one another by limits so exact that they do not encroach upon one another. Doubtless among the poor they continued to use stone tools after the introduction of copper ones, and copper tools after the introduction of iron ones; the same case has arisen in our day with vases of clay, of pewter, and of porcelain. The arms and utensils of wood have naturally decomposed, those of iron have been oxidized in the soil, those of stone and of copper alone have been preserved." This proposition, already clearly enunciated in 1813, and now recognized everywhere as a fundamental truth of pre-historic archæology, was not however generally accepted at once in Denmark; the materials accumulated in the museum were not yet numerous enough for the truth to be obvious to the eyes of all. It was only in Sweden that some authors admitted the theory of Mr. Vedel-Simonsen; in Denmark his ideas were for a long time only a sort of prophecy of what everybody was going to accept. The man who was to draw from the archæological finds, and from the antiquities themselves, the incontestable proofs of this theory and to secure its recognition throughout the entire world was Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, for fifty years the director of the Pre-historic Museum of Copenhagen, which he raised to the rank of the first institution of that kind in Europe; he has been called the father of the pre-historic archæology of the North. In 1816 he succeeded Mr. Nyerup as secretary of the archæological commission and as director of the museum, a position which he held until his death, in 1865. This remarkable man was truly self-taught,-originally a merchant without erudition, and for that matter little enough attached to books, but he had very extraordinary natural gifts, an observing mind, and a very delicate perception of objects of art and of antiquities. He was an excellent numismatist and a good connoisseur in art. trained eye and his fine perception of the style and of the characteristic details of ancient objects permitted him to arrive at a more profound knowledge of pre historic antiquities. For him the aim was no longer to seek to determine and to illustrate pre-historic objects by the interpretation of traditions. Through him, as well as through the young men who attached themselves to this acute connoisseur and to his rich museum, pre-historic archæology became a study of the antiquities themselves; they understood that a knowledge of the very remote times to which these antiquities ascend is only obtained from these contemporary remains by the empirical path and by an inductive method. His Mr. Thomsen mainly exerted his influence by his labors inside of the museum. It was in 1819, that he began to open the latter to the public for a few hours each week; he was always there himself to instruct visitors. In this way he succeeded by degrees in conquering for the Archæological museum a place in the national interests. In the classification and exposition of antiquities he was ever making progress. Very early there began to form in him the knowledge of the three great periods of the development of civilization, and of the way in which an archæological museum should be arranged conformably to this principle. What Mr. Vedel-Simonsen had declared on that subject ten years before does not seem at once to have convinced him. From 1825, however, he expounded to Professor Keyser, of Christiania, his ideas upon the classification of a pre-historic collection on the basis of this chronological principle. We know that he had already, in 1830, realized this |