Our Book Shelf

Abstract

THIS volume belongs to the “Contemporary Science Series,” edited by Mr. Havelock Ellis. It contains a popular account of the Eastern and Western Inoits, the Apaches, the Naïrs, the mountaineers of the Neilgherries, and the Kolarians of Bengal. The writer does not group his facts in accordance with any controlling idea, so that the book can hardly be said to have much continuity of interest. He writes, however, in a fresh and lively style, and has brought together many curious facts; and the work may serve as an attractive and useful introduction to the study of some aspects of ethnography. He has, of course, to describe many customs and modes of thought which, if judged from our point of view, would produce a strange impression; but these he puts in their right place as elements which mark definite stages of evolution. Too few references are given in the notes, but the information may be accepted as generally trustworthy, having been for the most part derived from the statements of travellers and missionaries during the first half of the present century.

Primitive Folk: Studies in Comparative Ethnology.

By Élie Reclus. (London: Walter Scott, 1891.)