not appear to be entirely adequate, and students were not in a position to reinforce their opinions by arguments from other sources.
Discussion was influenced, and perhaps to a certain extent stifled, by misconceptions or misapplications of recent work in the field of Biology. The Origin of Species was published in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871. Embryologists were endeavouring by the microtome and the microscope to reconstruct the genealogical tree of life, palæontologists were digging up fossils and reconstructing hoped-for "missing links" from odd bones and teeth, while comparative anatomists were dissecting all manner of beasts with the same intent. "Evolution" was the catch-word.
So it is not surprising that many of those who were interested in the traditional lore of the backward peoples and in that of our own folk should have been infected with the current views. This tendency was possibly reinforced by the Elementargedanke doctrine of Bastian. This was widely accepted in Germany, and to a considerable extent elsewhere. It was like the entirely illusory Bathybius of Haeckel, the primordial protoplasmic slime of the abyssmal depths of the ocean, an undifferentiated mass from which higher growths might arise under suitable conditions, and, given a similar environment, might even have a similar appearance.
Those interested in the material culture of man were working mainly on evolutionary lines. The pioneer in this branch was General A. H. Pitt Rivers (A. Lane Fox), who began to collect ethnological specimens to illustrate his views as far back as 1851, so that he may be claimed as a pre-Darwinian evolutionist. His main aim was to demonstrate (1) that the forms of the implements of savage peoples show evidence of being derived from natural forms, such as might have been employed by man before he had learnt the art of modifying them to his uses, (2) that the
