Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/634

324 in foreign languages, is undoubtedly, in its revised and expanded form, a great achievement. It is, in fact, an encyclopædia, basing its conception of human marriage on biology, with a treatment of the subject on its sociological, anthropological, and juridical aspects, with excursions into the domains of magic and folk-lore. The modest single octavo of 1891 has, like a great Buddhist pagoda starting from a small relic shrine and developed by accretions into a stately building, extended into three portly volumes, and the world’s literature has been diligently ransacked in search of the materials from which the structure has been erected. The bibliography, which occupied 28 pages in the first edition, now extends to 117, which may be compared with 141 in the last edition of the Golden Bough. The result is that it has now become a costly book, the price of which is beyond the means of many anthropologists. It is, of course, important that notes consisting mainly of references should indicate the scope of the material. But when, for instance, a note quotes no less than 43 references to establish the fact that “infant- or child-marriage betrothal is practised, more or less frequently as exclusive custom, among a large number of African tribes,” the student out of reach of a great library will find it impossible to discover variances of practice which may be of the highest moment. Further, as in the case of other treatises like this dealing with comparative religion and custom, the uneasy suspicion arises that some of this material may not be worth preserving. How much of it will survive the practical tests of reliability? Was a particular writer a person who had lived and worked among some tribe of the lower culture long enough to learn their language and earn their confidence? Was his position such as to give him access to the best informants? Did he understand the questions which deserve investigation, did he possess the tact necessary for such an enquiry? In short, was he a witness who, on other questions of fact, would satisfy the requirements of a court of law? The information now available is so voluminous that anthropologists will be forced to establish some organization competent to winnow the good grain from the chaff.

A new and welcome feature in this edition is the discussion of