Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/255

 Reviews. 2 1 9

of human intelligence to evolve independently identical ideas when the conditions are themselves identical. Polygenesis in his inventions may probably be regarded as testimony in favour of the monogenesis of Man." These remarks are as applicable to folklore as they are to technology.

Very wisely, the essays have been reprinted substantially as they were first delivered and published, only verbal errors and actual misquotations having been corrected. On the other hand, one cannot help feeling that the editor would have done well, either from his own store of learning or with the help of others, to have drawn attention in footnotes to statements which do not represent the present state of our knowledge. To take a very few examples, there is no evidence for supposing a relation between the coil and broken coil ornaments of New Zealand and New Guinea, still less that they "were probably derived from Assam" (p. 15). A zoologist experiences a sensation of pain when he reads of an "armadillo" in East Africa (p. 66). A note might have been added of the occurrence of a curved missile stick among the Hopi (p. 131). An additional argument in favour of the view " that the wamera preceded the bow" (p. 133) may be found in bone spear- throwers of palaeolithic age from French caves. Reference might have been given to the considerable amount of work that has been done of recent years concerning the "Copper Age" (p. 157 fif.), the same also applies to the distribution of spirals (p. 172). As no references are given to more recent literature, readers who are ignorant of all that has been done on these lines during the last quarter of a century will be inclined to take the suggestions of Pitt-Rivers as the final word on any subject. At all events a note of warning should have been made by the editor.

Perhaps I may be permitted a personal allusion. Somewhere about 1878, either just before or after I had taken my degree, I came across, I cannot remember how, an illustrated account of an evolutionary series by Lane-Fox, of which my zoological, embryological, and palseontological studies at once enabled me to appreciate the importance. It was not till a decade later that the opportunity occurred for me to contribute anything