INTRODUCTION 1 9 



certain Australian tribes. Granting, he says, that 

 circumcision, the removal of teeth, and other 

 similar mutilations imply a condition of political 

 or religious subjection or both no longer exist- 

 ing among these tribes, the custom is obviously the 

 vestige of a more complex social condition. This 

 conclusion seems the less reliable, since, according 

 to the Eev. J. Matthew, the rite of circumcision 

 was probably introduced into Australia by natives 

 of Sumatra, and this view is confirmed by the 

 local distribution of the custom and by other evi- 

 dences of the same origin, such as the paintings 

 which have been discovered in certain caves. 1 



(c) Teratology and social embryology also play a 

 part in sociology, but it is of less importance than 

 the others. 



Certain customs among criminals show a re- 

 semblance to the habits of primitive man. On 

 the other hand, we find cases where the individual 

 development of an institution or society is a mere 

 repetition of the development through which similar 

 institutions and societies of other epochs and places 

 have passed. Thus, for instance, there still exists 

 in some parts of modern Russia a voluntary agri- 

 cultural commune, for the periodical division of the 

 land, an institution which existed more universally 

 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during 



1 The Cave Paintings of Australia (Journal of the Anthropo- 

 logical Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, April 1893, pp. 51 

 and following). 



