and cited that paper[1] long before, I make no doubt that I had learned the principles from it, though like the author of the paper I had forgotten the source of my information. I at once wrote to Dr. Howitt to do him the justice which he had failed to do himself.[2] Though I did not know it, there was no time to be lost, for when I was writing he had already been struck down by mortal sickness. Happily my letter reached him in life, and he sent me through his daughter a last message, a kind and generous message, in reply.
Another paper which deserves to be specially mentioned is a later one, entitled "Further Notes on the Australian Class Systems,"[3] in which Mr. Howitt acutely pointed out how among the Australian savages a certain social advance has been made in the better watered and more fertile districts, particularly on the coast, while the more archaic forms of society linger in the dry and desert interior, from which he inferred that in Australia the first steps towards civilisation have been conditioned by a heavier rainfall and a consequent greater abundance of food. This important principle was afterwards fully recognised and clearly stated by him in The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. Indeed he justly attached so much weight to it that he wished to illustrate it in his book by a map of the rainfall in Australia, which would show how in that continent progress in culture varies directly with the rainfall. For that purpose he applied to the meteorological authorities in London, but for lack of the necessary data, if I remember aright, the project was abandoned. Amongst his anthropological papers published elsewhere may be
- ↑ In my Totemism, published in 1887.
- ↑ At the same time I wrote to the same effect a letter to Man, and my letter was published in that journal, February, 1908, pp. 21 et seq. I believe I wrote at the same time an identical letter to The Athenaum, but on a cursory search through a file of that periodical I have not been able to find the letter.
- ↑ The Journal of the Anthropological Instiiute etc., vol. xviii. (1889), pp. 31-70.
