Kurnai' (Melbourne, 1880), which embodied the results of their inquiries and 'reflections on group marriage and relationship and marriage by elopement, drawn chiefly from the usages of the Australian aborigines. In 1880 Howitt and Fison also published 'The Kurnai Tribe, their Customs in Peace and War,' with an introduction by Lewis H. Morgan (Melbourne, 1880). Again in 1885 Howitt contributed an important paper on Kurnai rites to the 'Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.' Other important memoirs on the tribal systems by Howitt, writing either separately or jointly with Fison, followed in the same periodical until 1907.
In 1889 Howitt left Gippsland to become secretary of mines in Victoria, and in 1896 was appointed commissioner of audit and a member of the public service board; these two appointments he held until his retirement from public service in 1901. Until his death he pursued his studies in ethnology and other branches of science. An important treatise, 'The Eucalypti of Gippsland,' was issued together with a valuable paper on the 'Organisation of the Australian Tribes' in the 'Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria' in 1889. Finally in 1904 Howitt published his chief book, 'The Native Tribes of South East Australia.'
Fison and Howitt may fairly claim to be pioneers of the new anthropology, and by their researches into the organisation of the human family to have given the study the character of an exact science. The American investigator, Lewis Morgan, in his great book on the 'Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family' (1869), led the way, but they went on their own lines further than he, notably in regard to systems of marriage and relationship among aboriginal Australians.
After retirement from the public service in 1901, Howitt lived chiefly at Melbourne in the enjoyment of widespread recognition as an ethnologist. In 1904 he received the Clarke memorial medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales. In 1905-6 he was chairman of the Royal Commission on coal raining in Victoria. On 27 June 1906 he was made C.M.G. In 1907 he was president of the meeting at Adelaide of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science; and in the same year he was the first recipient from the same; association of the newly instituted Mueller medal. He died at Melbourne on 7 March 1908 (barely three months after the death of his associate Fison). He married on 18 Aug. 1864, at Adelaide, Maria, daughter of Benjamin Boothby, judge of the supreme court at Adelaide; she died in 1902, leaving two sons and three daughters. A portrait of Howitt in bas relief is on the monument to Burke and Wills at Melbourne, Victoria.
[The Victorian Naturalist, vol. xxiv. April 1908, by Howitt's friend. Prof. W. Baldwin Spencer; (Melbourne) Argus, 9 March 1908; Man, viii. 1908; Johns's Notable Australians, 1908; J. G. Frazer's Howitt and Fison, art. in Folk Lore, June 1909, pp. 144 seq.; unpublished despatches; public records; information supplied by G. Harry Wallis of the City Museum, Nottingham.]
HOWLAND, Sir WILLIAM PEARCE (1811–1907), Canadian statesman, born at Paulings, New York, on 29 May 1811, was son of Jonathan Howland, a descendant of John Howland, who migrated from England in 1620. His mother's maiden name was Lydia Pearce. After education at the common school of his native place and at Kinderhook Academy, Howland went to Canada in 1830 and found employment in a general store at Cooksville, Ontario. His business interests rapidly grew, and in association with his brother Peleg he soon owned a number of country stores, and made large profits in lumbering and rafting ventures. For some years he was in business near Brampton, Ontario, and later went into the milling and grain business with his brothers Peleg and Frederick. He bought the Lambton mills, near Toronto, in 1840.
In 1857 Howland was elected to parliament, representing West York as a follower of the advanced liberal leader, George Brown [q. v. Suppl. I]. In 1862 he alienated himself from that leader by accepting the portfolio of finance in the (Jolin Sandfield) Macdonald-Sicotte liberal administration. Brown and Mowat refused to join on the ground that the cabinet was hostile to the principle of representation by population. Howland and McDougall, the only Ontario liberals in the ministry, defended themselves from the charge of party disloyalty by asserting that they were acting solely in the interests of confederation? Howland remained in cabinet office for six years. In 1862 he was sent to England with Sicotto on militia matters. At the same time he pursued negotiations with reference to the Intercolonial railway and to the proposed cession of Rupert's Land by the Hudson's Bay Company. He had an acute prevision of the rich possibilities
