Tylor to Pitt-Rivers 18.2.1886

L193, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Pitt-Rivers papers

University Museum, Oxford | Feb 18 1886

Dear General Pitt-Rivers

The enclosed rough tracing & particulars of the Baskir Tatars’ water-mill which is like those we saw in the Lewis, has been done some time. But I kept it waiting in order to send with it a curious old fashioned kind of padlock which an old man still sells in the Oxford cattle-market. It seems however that the maker is ill, for after repeated trials I have failed to find him, so I send the water-mill paper by itself. There is another Asiatic mention of the upright Norse mill but I cannot for the moment find it. The roof of your museum has at last the slates on so I trust it will be fit to receive its contents before long.

Believe me
Yours very truly
Edward B. Tylor

[Enclosure a tracing of plate I, Pallas, Reise durch veischielene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs St Petersburg 1771-6 p. 45 and text [presumably from same source]

L193, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, Pitt-Rivers papers

Rushmore, Salisbury | March 1. 86

Dear Mr Tylor

Many thanks for sending me the drawing of the Baskir Water mill. It is very interesting both in its resemblances & its variations from the Norse mill we saw. The fact of their supposing it to have been invented themselves does not of course prove that it was so and the ... [word illegible] is a likely one for the ... [words illegible] to have spread, the account does not speak of an arrangement of levers to raise the upper millstone for the purpose of grinding fine or coarse but the drawing .... [2 words illegible] to me to shew that such an arrangement does exist as in the Norse Mill. I have got my Norse Mill set up in a little house similar to the one we saw it in and I have found near here an old ... [word illegible] in a frame with apparatus for grinding fine & coarse like the Scotch ones.

I have been much amused by the papers on Genesis between Gladstone Huxley and others. [insert illegible] Nothing better than Huxley's papers ever appeared in Punch. But what are we to think of a leader of men like Gladstone allowing himself to be squashed and quizzed about like an indiarubber doll in the iron hands of a Huxley simply by [word illegible] to realize his own ignorance, was ever [word illegible] so punished before. As to Professor Drummond's theology we must have been theologists all our lives without knowing it. I dont see how by his philosophy the Bible differs from other good books or why parts of Shakespeare should not be taken out & [word illegible] with it, parts of the Bible expunged & burnt or sold in Holly... St with french letters & the new book brought out as an improved version of the Bible. If the Bible is only part of the evolution of human ideas there is the evidence of inspiration in the class of ideas beyond another why are not the arts & sciences [3 words illegible] all inspired I believe that Professor Drummond when he has done with his [word illegible] theology will come [word illegible] a collection of primitive locks & keys odds & ends of [2 words illegible] like some other [word illegible] & respected people. I hope Mrs Tylor is well & that you are none the worse for the barbarous ordeal you underwent in my company at Caldermouth

Yours very truly
A Pitt Rivers

Transcribed by AP as part of the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project, 2011