4 i8 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



connected with initiation and magic, special attention has been paid by 

 Messrs. Spencer and Gillen to the totemic system and to matters connected 

 with the social organization of the tribes ; and here again the authors insist 

 upon the differences between the groups of tribes, and that the customs 

 of no one tribe or group can be taken as typical of Australia generally in 

 in any other sense than as broad outline. Both works deal with considerable 

 fullness with the institution of marriage among the Australians, and the 

 customs by which too close intermarriage is prevented. Among other sub- 

 jects treated with especial fullness by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are the 

 totems, the bull-roarers, the Intichuma ceremonies (associated with the 

 totems), the initiation ceremonies, customs relative to the knockng out 

 of teeth, traditions, burial and mourning, spirit individuals, medicine men 

 and magic, methods of obtaining wives, myths, clothing, weapons, imple- 

 ments, decorative art, and names. Professor Semon formed a moderate 

 opinion of the capacity of the Australians. Though coarse and heavy, their 

 faces are not bad looking and have expression. They are " no link between 

 monkeys and men, but human creatures through and through," though of 

 one of the lowest types. They have no pottery, no agriculture, no abstract 

 ideas of any kind, can not count very far, but are clever in learning to 

 write, read, and draw, are experts in signaling, and have their intellect 

 and senses "brilliantly developed in all directions bearing on the hunt," 

 with great dexterity in the use of weapons. 



GENEKAL NOTICES. 



Miss Mary H. Kingsley has given 

 in her West African Studies * a book 

 marked by pungent wit and striking 

 originality in its sketches of adventure 

 and observation, and containing in the 

 chapters devoted to ethnology results of 

 her personal studies. She was already 

 known by a record of her adventures of 

 a young Englishwoman traveling alone 

 through some of the worst regions of 

 West Africa, embodied in her book Trav- 

 els in West Africa, which was published 

 in the latter part of 1898. The present 

 book may be regarded, as its name im- 

 plies, as the result and the embodiment 

 of the afterthoughts of that hazardous 

 journey. It includes, after descriptions 

 in which the unconventional directness 

 of expression is much to be remarked, an 

 account of African characteristics and a 

 description of fishing in West Africa, 

 chapters of a soberer sort on fetich, 

 schools of fetich, witchcraft, African 

 medicine and the witch doctor, and his- 

 torical and economical chapters on Early 

 Trade, French Discovery, Commerce, the 

 Crown Colony System and some of its 



* West African Studies. By Mary H. Kingsley. 

 New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 633, 

 with Map. Price, $5. 



incidents, The Clash of Cultures, and Af- 

 rican Property. Miss Kingsley's criti- 

 cisms of the present system of adminis- 

 tration being regarded as rather destruc- 

 tive, she endeavors to set forth, in a 

 chapter entitled An Alternative Plan, 

 " some other way wherein the African 

 colonies could be managed." Special at- 

 tention is invited by the author to two 

 articles in the appendix to the volume 

 by M. le Comte C. N. de Cardi and Mr. 

 John Harford. We are pleased to note 

 the high appreciation which Miss Kings- 

 ley expresses of the anthropological work 

 concerning west-coast tribes of our for- 

 mer contributor, Colonel A. B. Ellis Sir 

 A. B. Ellis when he died. 



Mr. Frederick Palmer's In the Klon- 

 dyke * is an unpretentious book and free 

 from the appearance of sensationalism, 

 but gives a clear and graphic account 

 of the region and its ways and of the 

 getting there at the breaking up of win- 

 ter. The author was at Dyea late in 

 February, having intended to go with a 

 Government relief expedition which had 



* In the Klondyke, including an Account of a 

 Winter's Journey to Dawson. By Frederick Pal- 

 mer. New York: Charles Scrihner's Sons. Pp. 

 218, with plates. Price, $1.50. 



