Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/432

 4o6 Reviews.

wish. However they possess many useful and agreeable things, but it is hard to obtain them, and if you take a little I'rom their superfluity then they become nasty, for they are pedantic, petty and narrow. They have no social feeling like the village folk who are always ready to share their superfluity. . . . The European is immensely rich and his speech eternally dwells upon what he buys and sells" (pj). 120-1).

W. J. Perry.

The Family among the Australian Aborigines. A socio- logical study. By B. Malinowskl (University of London : Monographs on Sociology, vol. 2). University of London Press, 1913. 8vo, pp. xv + 326. With a biblio. 6s. net.

The aim of this book is, as its author puts it, "to give a correct description of the Australian individual family." The subject is certainly novel and refreshing. Who has ever before given much interest to the individual family among a group of savages whose claim to sociological distinction rests chiefly on the institution of group marriage attributed to them by the leading authorities on their anthropology ? " In all theoretical passages of works devoted to the social organization of the Australian tribes," says Dr. Malinowski, "the individual family is passed over in absolute silence." And yet it not only exists but plays a foremost part in the social life of these tribes ; it has a very firm basis in their customs and ideas, and " by no means bears the features of any- thing like recent innovation, or a subordinate form subservient to the idea of group marriage." Wives are obtained in various ways. There are certain normal, pacific methods of acquiring them, such as exchange of relatives, promise in infancy, and betrothal, and at the same time there are other more or less violent methods — elope- ment and capture ; but the latter, and especially capture, seem to be rather the exception than the rule, and in order to lead to a union recognized as legal the act of violence must be followed by some kind of expiation. "The idea of legality may be safely applied to Australian marriage in all its forms. For in all there