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The third and last part of this chapter will show how, under modern conditions of science and education, anthropology is to realize its programme. Hitherto, the trouble with anthropologists has been to see the wood for the trees. Even whilst attending mainly to the peoples of rude culture, they have heaped together facts enough to bewilder both themselves and their readers. The time has come to do some sorting; or rather the sorting is doing itself. All manner of groups of special students, interested in some particular side of human history, come now-a-days to the anthropologist, asking leave to borrow from his stock of facts the kind that they happen to want. Thus he, as general storekeeper, is beginning to acquire, almost unconsciously, a sense of order corresponding to the demands that are made upon him. The goods that he will need to hand out in separate batches are being gradually arranged by him on separate shelves. Our best way, then, of proceeding with the present inquiry, is to take note of these shelves. In other words, we must consider one by one the special studies that claim to have a finger in the anthropological pie.

Thus there is a very broad distinction between mineral matter and living matter. The elements of living matter are identical with those of mineral bodies; and the fundamental laws of matter and motion apply as much to living matter as to mineral matter; but every living body is, as it were, a complicated piece of mechanism which "goes," or lives, only under certain conditions. The germ contained in the fowl's egg requires nothing but a supply of warmth, within certain narrow limits of temperature, to build the molecules of the egg into the body of the chick. And the process of development of the egg, like that of the seed, is neither more nor less mysterious than that, in virtue of which, the molecules of water, when it is cooled down to the freezing-point, build themselves up into regular crystals.

In the great majority of cases, the fusion of the metal is accompanied by reduction from the state of oxide; in these the slag should be basic. It is not easy to reduce the whole of a reducible oxide (say oxide of copper or of iron) from a slag in which it exists as a borate or silicate; there should be at least enough soda present to liberate it. When the object is to separate one metal, say copper, without reducing an unnecessary amount of another (iron) at the same time, a slag with a good deal of borax is a distinct advantage. The slag then will probably not be free from copper, so that it will be necessary to powder and mix the slag with some soda and a reducing agent, and to again fuse the slag in order to separate this residual metal. In all those cases in which the slag retains an oxide of a heavy metal, this cleaning of the slag is advisable, and in the case of rich ores necessary. Slags containing sulphides are especially apt to retain the more easily reducible metals.

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