Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/47

Rh portant discoveries. The outdoor naturalist may, if he bear in mind how much there is yet unknown or uncertain as to the real history and belongings of primitive Man, not unreasonably expect to find something that may clear up one or other of these doubtful questions. In any case, the study and training of the zoologist will eminently fit him for such an undertaking, for it is upon zoological principles and by zoological methods that such questions can most properly be determined.

I have still another appeal to make to the zoologist, but it is one which I address to him in common with the thoughtful and scientific observer generally. It is that he should join in the careful and systematic record of the phenomena of the people of our own time and country. For this purpose an ethnographic survey has been organized for the United Kingdom, and facts are being accumulated with regard not only to the physical types of the inhabitants of various places, but also to their current traditions and beliefs and their peculiarities of dialect, as well as to the monuments and remains of ancient culture in their vicinity, and the other historical documents which tend to give evidence as to the continuity of race. If each individual among us is the result not only of the circumstances by which he is surrounded, but of the physical and moral characters which have come to him by the use during countless generations of faculties that have been ever growing and widening, the close observation of the present generation may reveal much of the history of the past, and give guidance to the generations to come.