Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/436

 Matthews] ANTHROPOLOGIC LITERATURE 37$

The author somewhat disarms criticism by saying in his preface : " The expert folk-lorist may find much to criticise ; but this book, treating of popular beliefs, is intended for popular reading." For all this modest declaration, we believe the expert will read the work with interest and profit, even if he finds in it little that is new to him or remembers illustrations which the author may have overlooked. We have noted some errors, but they are neither numerous nor important.

The following, coming from the pen of a physician, causes some surprise : i% Moreover, saltness has been thought to be an essential attribute of tears " (p. 169). If it is not known to be such, our text- books on physiology have long deceived us. Is the author one " who never ate his bread with tears," or never otherwise tasted the lachry- mal secretion ? It would seem that the savages of California recognize the saltness of tears. In Mr Curtin's Creation Myths of Primitive America, reviewed in this number, we find a Calif ornian tale (p. 419), of one who wept a rivulet of tears, and at the place where he wept there is now a salt spring.

The author, following Eugene Schuyler's Tur&istan, tells us : *' When, also, any one hiccoughs, it is etiquette to say, * You stole something from me,' and this phrase at such times is supposed to produce good luck " (p. 218). The rt viewer conjectures that this may not be so much for courtesy as for cure. He remembers that in his childhood an old rural dame once relieved him of hiccough by accusing him of theft, After some moments of angry and indignant denial on his part and reit- erated accusal on hers, she smiled and asked, " Where is your hiccough ? " " It is gone," was the reply. u Ves, and I scared it off ; I have often cured hiccough in that way," she said. He thought the cure was worse than the disease.

The work is well printed, tastefully bound, and presented, altogether, in the excellent style of the Riverside Press.

Washington Matthews.

The Cross in Tradition, History, and Art. By the Rev. William Wood Seymour. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1898. Roy. 8°, xxx, 489 pp., ills.

This sumptuous book is primarily ecclesiastic and devotional, and hence hardly to be considered or criticized from the standpoint of the scientist ; so that occasional lapses, such, for example, as the introduction of an illustration from Squier, without reference to this well-known author either in the bibliography or in the index, may be passed over lightly. The keynote to the work is struck in the opening paragraph, which is a quotation from St Augustine ; and this tone is

�� �