Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/579

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 563

tration, I have naturally formed opinions and come to conclusions with regard thereto. I have no intention of making an attack upon English prison officials as a body. Many of them, I feel sure, are most excellent men, performing highly distasteful, though necessary, duties. At the same time many of them are devotees of the system as it exists and either cannot see or, if they see, will not admit that it is capable of improvement. The result is that prison officials become more or less a caste and regard the prisoner from that standpoint.

In regard to the " coddling," I may say at once, as one who has been subjected to what has been called by that name, that it does not in fact exist. It may astonish some persons to learn that the convict is far worse off today than he was when transportation was in vogue, and in almost every respect his lot compares unfavorably with that of a convict in any other civilized country.

Prisons exist for the purpose of punishment, and this should be kept promi- nently in view. In regard to the jail-bird class, English prisons somewhat fail in this purpose, by not making them feel their punishment sufficiently. For every person is treated alike, and accordingly everyone feels his punishment not alike, but quite differently. To one man it is a living death, to another it is merely a temporary inconvenience. The curse of the present English prison system is that it is not reformatory. It manufactures criminals, and it never succeeds in leading back the professional criminal to the paths of virtue, and does not even attempt it. At the present time the public expends 650,000 annually in maintaining a few thousand prisoners, who are employed in unremunerative labor and are dis- charged from prison in every way unfitted to lead an honest life. Those who are charged with the administration of the English prison system know that it is a distasteful and degrading punishment. They desire that it shall remain so because, as I think, they fail to see that a prison should aim at being something other, or rather something more, than a vindictive or retributive institution. The primary object of such a place should be the emendation of the culprit, and until such object is recognized, and not only recognized but given practical effect, English prisons will remain, as I believe in my soul they are today, forcing-houses for criminals, paupers, and lunatics. H. J. B. MONTGOMERY, International Journal of Ethics, October, 1904. E. B. W.

Note on Funerary Ornaments from Rubiana and a Coffin from Sta. Anna, Solomon Islands. Specimens illustrated on an accompanying plate in the article were obtained from graves of Rubiana, Solomon Islands, by Rear-Admiral (the captain) Davis during the punitive expedition of 1901. They are, it is believed, the first specimens of this character to reach this country. These speci- mens are studied in connection with a miniature basket-work, but containing a skull, probably that of a chief, brought back by Admiral Davis in 1894. These specimens are sticks ornamented with tridacna shell secured by rattan lashings. Inside the skull-house were found massive rings, also of tridacna shell. When these rings are compared with similar objects still in use, it seems highly probable that some at least were rough copies, made for funerary purposes, of rings worn by the deceased as breast ornaments.

Of these funerary objects the most striking by far is the large tridacna slab carved in a fretwork design, and measuring 27 cm. in height. This was doubtless originally the " door " of a mortuary hut, similar to the hut brought back in 1894. The design on this slab becomes interesting when viewed in connection with one of the smaller pieces. In the slab the design consists of a double row of small anthropomorphic figures dancing with arms akimbo. The design is represented in the solid portion. Now, it is quite a comprehensible phase in the history of artistic evolution that the artist copying a design in pierced work should pay more attention to the open spaces than the solid portion. Becoming conventionalized, the " arms akimbo " are seen as unmeaning curls, and in the small plaque the bodies of the figures disappear.

A wooden figure of a fish containing a human skull was also obtained at about the same time on the island of Sta. Anna. Sometimes a corpse is kept this way for years, the natives waiting for a great funeral feast. The inhabitants of the Rubiana lagoon had made themselves notorious for their murders both of white