ABSTRACT
In 1863, the Anthropological Society of London was formed as a break-away from the Ethnological Society of London. James Hunt was appointed president of this new Society, and Richard Francis Burton-who was at that time British Consul at Fernando Po with responsibility for a several hundred mile stretch of the West African coast-became its fi rst Vice-President.2 Later that year, Hunt delivered a paper entitled ‘On the Mental and Physical Character of the Negro’ to the ‘Geography and Ethnology’ section of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), held in Newcastle. This paper was later distributed as a pamphlet, ‘On the Negro’s Place in Nature,’ which was dedicated in the form of a letter to ‘My Dear Burton’3 and subsequently published in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London.4
