Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/380

 REVIEWS.

Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. Vol. V. Sociology, Magic, and Religion of the Western Islanders. Cambridge University Press, 1904. 4to. Pp. xii, 378, with 22 plates and 84 figures in the text. Price 25s. net.

The present Report, the first complete volume of a work which is to embrace six in all, will naturally, with its sister volume dealing with the Eastern Islanders, be the main object of interest to the Folk-Lore Society. Those, however, who intend to purchase the pair will do well to secure the whole series, which they can do at comparatively little extra cost, thanks to the reduction given to subscribers for the set.

The fact that Somatology, Physiology, and Psychology also figured in the programme explains in part why an important expe- dition should have selected a small group of islands, which had been under missionary influence for some thirty years, for their field. On the one hand. Dr. Haddon had already established friendly relations with many of the islanders in 1888; on the other, far more complete statistics can be obtained from a small community than from a large one. There was further the addi- tional reason that, lying as the islands do between New Guinea and Cape York, there were questions of transmission of culture and racial mixture which must be solved, if at all, before civilisation had made too much headway.

The most important contribution in this volume, and also the greatest novelty, are the genealogical tables compiled by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. One of the main difficulties of getting to the bottom of savage ideas about kinship is the fact that few, if any, native terms have European correlatives, or vice versa. By fami- liarity with the language or long residence among a people this difficulty can be overcome, but until Dr. Rivers came on the scene no field anthropologist let loose among an unknown tribe could count on collecting in a few weeks without an interpreter, reliable