Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/253



the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth, century, evolution was, so to speak, "in the air." As Professor Tylor (Researches into the Early History of Mankind on the Development of Civilization, 1865; Primitive Culture, 1871), applied the evolutionary method to the thoughts and customs of mankind, so Colonel Lane-Fox (afterwards Lt.-General Pitt-Rivers) applied them to the handicrafts of man. Originally he investigated the evolution of firearms, and was led to believe that the same principle of extremely gradual changes, whereby improvements were effected, probably governed the development of the other arts, appliances, and ideas of mankind. We are told that as early as 1851 (that is eight years before the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species), with characteristic energy and scientific zeal, he began to illustrate his views, and to put them to a practical test; but it was not till 1867 that he published the first of his three epoch-making essays on "Primitive Warfare." These were followed in 1874 by papers read before the Anthropological Institute on the "Principles of Classification " and "Early Modes of Navigation"; the final paper of the series "On the Evolution of Culture," was read before the Royal Institution in 1875. There are many students who have been influenced