CHRISTY, HENRY (1810-1865)

This article appears in Volume V06, Page 296 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHR-CLI

CHRISTY, HENRY (1810-1865) , English ethnologist, was born at Kingston-on-Thames cn the 26th of July 181o. He entered his father's firm of hatters, in London, and later became a director of the London

Joint

JOINT (through Fr. from Lat. junctum, jungere, to join)

-Stock Bank. In 1850 he started on a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of journeys, which interested him in ethnological_ studies. Encouraged by what he saw at the

Great

GREAT

Exhibition of 1851, Christy devoted the rest of his life to perpetual travel and research, making extensive collections illustrating the early history of man, now in the British Museum. He travelled in Norway, Sweden, Denmark,

Mexico

, British Columbia and other countries; but in 1858 came the opportunity which brought him fame. It was in that year that the discoveries by Boucher de Perthes of flint-implements in France and England were first held to have clearly proved the

great

GREAT

antiquity of man. Christy joined the Geological Society, and in company with his friend Edouard Lartet explored the caves in the valley of the Vezere, a tributary of the Dordogne in the

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

of France. To his task Christy devoted money and. time ungrudgingly, and an account of the explorations appeared in Comptes rendus (Feb. 29th, 1864) and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London (June 21st, 1864). He died, however, on the 4th of May 1865, of inflammation of the lungs supervening on a severe cold contracted during excavation

work

WORK

at La Palisse, leaving a half-finished book, entitled Reliquiae Aquitanicae, being contributions to the Archaeology and Palaeontology of Perigord and the adjacent provinces of Southern France; this was issued in parts and completed at the expense of Christy's executors, first by Lartet and, after his death in 1870, by Professor Rupert Jones. By his will Christy bequeathed his magnificent archaeological collection to the nation. In 1884 it found a

home

in the British Museum. Christy took an

earnest

EARNEST (probably a corruption of the obsolete arles or erles, adapted from Lat. equivalent arrha, due to a confusion with the adjective " earnest," serious, O. Eng. eornust, cognate with Ger. ernst)

part in many philanthropic movements of his time, especially identifying himself with the efforts to relieve the sufferers from the Irish

famine

FAMINE (Lat. fames, hunger)

of 1847.

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