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Report of the Council of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for 1881

The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 11 (1882), p. 485 [pp. 482-487]

... Anthropological Science has also suffered during the last year a heavy loss by the death of Professor GEORGE ROLLESTON. In 1860, the year in which he was elected to the Linacre Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology at Oxford, he joined the Ethnological Society, and thence passed to the Institute on its formation as one of the original members. The Journal of the Institute contains several characteristic papers from Professor Rolleston's pen, especially those "On the People of the Long Barrow Period," "On the Human Remains at Cissbury," and "On Excavations at   Sigwell." Probably his most important contribution to anthropology was contained in the well-written work on "British Barrows," prepared in conjunction with our respected member Canon Greenwell. But the value of Professor Rolleston's services to anthropology is by no means to be measured by the number of his written contributions. Always burdened by the pressure of official duties, he could command but scant leisure for original investigation or for the preparation of papers. But whenever he was able to attend our evening meetings, he never failed to freshen our discussions by his singular fluency of speech, and by his extraordinary range of general knowledge. At the Bristol Meeting of the British Association in 1875, he presided over the Department of Anthropology, and not only delivered an address of great value, but conducted the whole proceedings with his accustomed felicity. Professor Rolleston's death is the more to be deplored in as much as it occurred at the comparatively early age of fifty-two, at a time of life when hope was entertained of much future work, especially in the domain of archaeological anatomy, for which he was peculiarly fitted by a rare combination of science and scholarship. ...


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