S&SWM PR papers L643

L643

R. Istituto di Studi Superiori in Firenze | Direzione del Museo Zoologico dei Vertebrati | Firenze le 22 Sept 1889

Dear Sir

I do not know whether you remember me, but I have not forgotten the very pleasant and instructive visit I paid in your company to your splendid and unique Ethnological Museum, then at South Kensington, in 1882; when you so kindly showed me your wonderful series illustrating the evolution of weapons & implements.

Since then I have been engaged in accumulating notes and materials for a comparative study of what might be called the Last Days of the Stone Age. In this not easy task I have been very fortunate and fairly successful, and although not a few lacunae exist in the collection of types of such implements & weapons which I have formed for the purpose, yet I believe that I shall soon be able to begin my work in earnest.

In this it is my intention to follow in some respects the path which you have traced in so masterly a manner. I have the catalogue of your collection, published by the Science & Art Department, with which you kindly favored me as also some of your later papers published by the Anthropological Institute; but all my efforts have up to the present proved vain in trying to get a copy of your Lectures on Primitive warfare, published in the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution in 1867-69. I have not even been able to see that work of yours to read it and take notes, and I only know by a few quotations which I have come across that it would be of great value to me for the investigations I am making.

I have therefore taken the liberty of addressing myself to you, and would be very grateful if you could even lend me a copy, which I would return as soon as read.

I need not add, after what I have said, that in case you had any duplicates of stone implements for which you have no worthier destination you would do me a very great favor and perhaps fill up some important lacuna, if you would kindly let me have them for the collection which I have formed, which is destined for the National Ethnological Museum of Italy. From what I have said before you will gather that the stone implements &c of modern savages are those which have a special interest for me, the older and prehistoric implements have been collected merely for comparative purposes.

In any way I trust that you will consider the end in view, pardon the liberty I have taken, and with [insert] the [end insert] expression of my highest consideration and best wishes believe me

Truly yours
Enrico H. Giglioli
Vice President of the Anthropological Society of Italy

General Pitt-Rivers | &c &c &c | London

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L819

R. Istituto di Studi Superiori in Firenze | Direzione del Museo Zoologico dei Vertebrati | Firenze li 6 Feb 1892

Dear General Pitt-Rivers,

About two years ago you kindly sent me volumes I and II on the results of your elaborate excavations and researches in Cranborne Chase. I have lately had occasion to look through carefully that truly monumental labor of yours, and have done so with intense interest and great admiration. If in some other countries your example could be followed, how many yet obscure problems relating to historic and prehistoric ethnology would find their solution!

I should like to show your volumes at one of the meetings of our Anthropological Society and say something about the grand task you have undertaken. I trust that you have no objection to my doing so; and should be obliged if, in case you have  published any sequel to the second volume, you will kindly inform me and possibly let me have a copy of any later volume. In your letter to me two years ago you mention a third volume then going through the press.

Since I last wrote to you I have steadily gone on collecting materials illustrating the later Stone-Age in different countries, I have been more fortunate and successful than I ever hoped to be and I now have valuable data and specimens for a comparative study of that interesting subject.

Hoping that this will find you well, with cordial best wishes, believe me

Yours very truly
Enrico H. Giglioli
Vice President Anthrop. Society of Italy

General A. Pitt-Rivers F.R.S. | &c &c &c | Rushmore

Transcribed by AP May / June 2011 as part of the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project.