Man: Past and Present

Abstract

IT is scarcely necessary to extol the virtues of the late Prof. A. H. Keane's invaluable compilation of data relating to the races of mankind and their customs (see NATURE, June 8, 1899, p. 121), for it has been the vade mecum of almost every working ethnologist for more than twenty years. If the authors of the new edition had a task of exceptional difficulty in practically re-writing a work of so encyclopaedic a nature they also had a great opportunity. Moreover, Mrs. Hingston Quiggin and Dr. Haddon had exceptional, if not unique, qualifications for making the most of their chance. But they have contented themselves with pouring their new wine into Keane's old bottles. Even so glaring an anachronism as Keane's classification of the races of mankind and the use of the unpardonable term "Caucasian,"with many of its unfortunate implications, have been retained. They have made a digest of the modern literature of ethnology that will be extremely useful to the expert, who knows what to select and what to reject, but utterly bewildering to the student and the general reader, who expect some sort of consistency and some leading idea to bind together such vast masses of data as are presented to them in this book. Instead of this they will find an excellent series of extracts from a host cf authors without any serious attempt to create a consistent story or to explain the wide discrepancies in their interpretations of the facts.

Man: Past and Present.

By A. H. Keane. Revised, and largely re-written, by A. Hingston Quiggin and A. C. Haddon. Pp. xi + 582 + xvi plates. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1920.) Price 36s. net.