MAN IN ZOOLOGY.
By E.W. Brabrook, F.S.A.,
President of the Anthropological Institute.
I have to thank the Editor of 'The Zoologist' for giving me the privilege of addressing his readers on "Man." He has himself shown, beyond controversy, how fitting the subject of Man is for the pages of this Journal. A zoology which omitted from its purview the highest and most interesting of all animals would indeed be incomplete.
The founder of the Anthropological Society of London, in his opening address to that body thirty years ago, compared his science to the last volume of a work on zoology, "with perhaps an appendix." He accepted the investigation of the relations of Man to the Mammalia as the first great duty of the society he formed. He did not, however, confine this duty within those limits. On the contrary, he defined anthropology as the science of the whole nature of Man, as including in its grasp nearly the whole of the circle of the sciences.
In the years 1846 to 1850 the relation between the study of Man and the study of animals generally was recognized by the British Association in the appointment of an ethnological subsection to the section (D) of Zoology. Dr. Topinard, in his excellent work 'L'Homme dans la Nature,' says, "l'anthropologie vraie est l'histoire de l'Homme considérée au point de vue animal," and refers to the purpose of that work as being to ascertain as to Man "ses rapports avec la zoologie générale, la place qu'il occupe matériellement parmi les animaux, et son origine probable ou descendance." We are entirely of opinion that this is not the whole of anthropology, but the prominence given to this branch of anthropology by a writer of so great authority and distinction certainly justifies the position I am asking for it in the consideration of professed zoologists. There is no line of cleavage between the two sciences.
