Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/217

 Reviews. 207

interested in his pictures They recognised many of the

portraits and expressed great emotion."

The account given of the burial rites of the Indians suggests the desirabihty that some ethnologist should prepare a map show- ing the distribution of the different modes of burial practised by the aborigines of North America. The data for such a map are probably accessible only in the United States. If carefully pre- pared, it would throw much light on the relation of custom to environment and to race, and on the transmission of custom.

E. Sidney Hartland.

The Races of Man : an Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography. By J. Deniker, Sc.D. (Paris). London : Walter Scott, Limited. 1900.

The title of this book speaks for itself. It is a compendium of facts ; like all such works, covering too wide a ground to be otherwise than dry to read, but very useful for reference. As a science yet in its youth, anthropology includes many facts, and series of facts, the relations of which have hitherto hardly been determined. The racial characteristics of men are among these ; and here the author is compelled not merely to state facts, but also to criticise and to set forth his own conclusions. The compilation is thus varied and strengthened by original contributions of importance.

Amid so large a collection of facts it is easy to find slips. Comparing p. 148, for instance, with p. 123, I am not sure whether the author intends us to understand that primitive man was soUtary in his habits. I do not believe man ever " wandered solitary through the virgin forests," that is to say, not habitually. Theories of various kinds have been built on the supposition that he did, but there is not the slightest evidence to that effect. On the contrary, man must have been from the beginning a social creature, probably wandering in herds before he learnt to recog- nise kinship, and to fit together the elements of what is really human society.

Nor can the student safely accept many of the statements, of necessity vague and general in form, without qualification. The