Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/439

 Revieivs. 407

We also have a reprint of Sir J. Frazer's Inaugural Lecture when he was appointed to the Chair of Anthropology at Liverpool, in which he discusses the Scope of Social xVnthropology, and pleads for the study of backward races in consequence of the rapid dis- appearance of savagery. This book may be safely recommended as an admirable introduction to the study of anthropology and folklore, and as an exhibition of the scientific methods which have

raised it to its present position.

W. Crooke.

Short Notices.

T/ie Childhood of the World: A Simple Account of Man's Origin and Early History. By Edward Clodd. New edition. Rewritten and enlarged. Crown Svo. Pp. vi + 240. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1914. Price 4s. 6d. net.

It is almost superfluous to recommend this new edition of a book, originally published in 1872, which has been several times re- printed, and translated into Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Sekwana, and Swedish. It is divided into three parts : Man the Worker; Man the Tliinker; Man the Discoverer and Inventor. In the present edition, which is provided with an excellent bibliography, it summarises, in an interesting way, the present state of anthropological knowledge.

The Infancy- of Religion By D. C. Owen, M.A., Rector of Stoke Abbott. Post Svo. Pp. vi-|-i43. Oxford: University Press. 19 1 4. Price 3s. 6d. net.

The object of this book is to answer the question : Can religion legitimately be called an instinct of human nature ? Is it as much of the essence of man as, for example, the gift of speech ? Or is it something that he has acquired in the course of his history? The answer is, as might have been expected, a demonstration of the reality of the religious sense, and of the tenacity of its hold upon primitive folk. With a considerable knowledge of current anthro- pological literature, the writer deals in succession with Man and Nature ; Man and the Supernatural ; Man and his Kind ;