Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/641

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in 1906 and Fitzpatrick Lecturer in 191 5-16. In 1 908 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded the gold medal in 1915. From 1917 to 1919 he served on the Council. He was President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association in 191 1 and of the Psychological Sub-section in 1 9 19, and was to have taken the chair of the Psychological Section at Hull this year. He was President of the Folk-Lore Society in 1920-21, and was elected President of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1921, an office which he still held at the time of his death. He was an Hon. LL.D. of St. Andrews and a D.Sc. of Manchester University.

The bare recital of the appointments and offices held by Rivers, though significant enough, is no sufficient index of the breadth of his interests and the number of his activities, while even the long list of his published works, ^ to those who knew what lay behind, is only a very imperfect indication of his contribution to the advancement of science. He was an intel- lectual pioneer in more than one direction, and his influence was exerted not merely through the written word, but also by the example of scrupulous accuracy and scientific method which he afforded, as well as by the advice and sympathy which he gave freely to other workers. A study of Rivers' career reveals a personality which grew continuously up to the time of his death. Starting as a psychologist his inclusion in the Cam- bridge expedition to the Torres Straits, in 1899, directed his attention to ethnology and social anthropology. As might have been expected, his original mind, keen analytical faculty, and capacity for exact detailed work, when directed to the problem of research in the field, could not fail to produce some noteworthy contribution to the subject, even on the threshold of his career as an anthropologist. The method of genealogical research which he then elaborated was not only a fruitful source of fresh information in his own hands, but has proved a powerful instrument of research when applied by others. In 1906 he published a book on the Todas which embodied the result of researches made while on an expedition to S. India which, in its patient attention to detail, its accuracy of observation, combined with breadth of view and sense of proportion, was a model to the ethnographer. In 1908 Rivers made his first

^ For a full list of his published works see the bibliography appended to the obituary notice which appeared in Man, July, 1922, 61.