Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/22

 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

The past year has shown signs of activity in many departments of Folklore. First we may notice, as break- ing new ground, that the American Department of the Interior has established a branch of the Ethnological Survey in the Philippines, from which have issued already two volumes : The Negritos of Zambales (1904) and The Bontoc Igorot, by A. E. Jenks (Manila, 1905). These books deal chiefly with physical and ethnological ques- tions, but it is to be hoped that questions of custom and folklore may in time find record. These important islands, with their numerous tribes, have been hitherto very little known, and they offer a promising field for research. The volumes mentioned are illustrated by a great number of plates, chiefly human types, but including a few pictures of festal groups or of the daily occupations of the natives. From the American Smith- sonian Institution come two volumes. The Report for 1904 is The Hako, a Pawnee Ceremony, by A. C. Fletcher. This huge volume is filled with a complete and most minute record of the ceremony, including songs and music, gestures and dances, everything, as by cinema- tograph. It may be doubted whether records on so minute a scale are necessary, but at least the fault is on the right side. It is easy not to use what we do not want ; our difficulty is generally to find what we do want. The Institution has also published a volume