l62 



NA TURE 



[December io, 1908 



Board to advise and regulate, but yet gives it no means 

 of obtaining knowledge. By some obscure depart- 

 mental tradition research is supposed to be outside the 

 scope of the Board of Agriculture — it spends some- 

 thing between 400L and 500Z. a year in assisting 

 various investigations ! But if the Board of Agricul- 

 ture is to forward the industry of agriculture, its very 

 first business is investigation and research ; it must 

 condescend to go to work in the way other countries 

 and our own colonies aid their farmers, and it must 

 have money to do the work with. Now to build up a 

 proper intelligence department, the present grant of 

 11,000/. a year to the Board of Agriculture for educa- 

 tional purposes is none too much ; let it be allowed to 

 keep this money and retain its connection with the 

 colleges by using it to promote investigation in them, 

 building up in one a mycological department which 

 would act as consultant for the board, in another an 

 entomological department, and so. forth. Meantime 

 let the educational work of the colleges be put under 

 the control of its proper authority, the Board of 

 Education. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF MAN.' 



■p^R. L. FROBENIUS is a prolific writer on ethno- 

 •*-^ logical subjects, and we welcome a translation 

 of a book which gives in popular language the results 

 of his wide reading. The book deals with an exten- 

 sive range of subjects, upon many of which very 

 diverse views are held, and the English reader will 

 be pleased to be able readily to grasp the point of 

 view of a German ethnologist; but a book, in some 

 cases, has to be judged by what is omitted as well 

 as by what it actually contains. 



In dealing with articles of personal adornment the 

 author admits that the objects worn have usually 

 another value than that of pure ornament ; he refers 

 to trophies and currency, but entirely omits the very 

 widely spread wearing of " ornaments " for magical 

 purposes. He makes some interesting observations 

 on scarifications of various central African tribes, and 

 alludes to the significance of these and other forms of 

 skin decoration ; but, unfortunately, he terms all such 

 tattooing. 



The making of shell money he regards as the most 

 peculiar of the reasons for the origin of labour. He 

 quotes R. Parkinson concerning the use and ex- 

 change value of the de^i'arra. Under the term of 

 dress-language he refers to strings and belts of wam- 

 pum, and to the notched and painted eagle feathers 

 of some North American Indians. Also culled from 

 American sources are his accounts of sign and gesture 

 language, but no allusion is made to the gesture 

 language of such peoples as the Australians, Papuans, 

 Neapolitans, and many others. One of the best sec- 

 tions is that dealing with drums and drum language, 

 which he believes has a very wide extension in Africa, 

 and is " convinced that this peculiar drum-language is 

 current throughout Central Africa east of the chain 

 of lakes." He says (p. 86) : — " It would appear to 

 be most highly developed in the western parts of 

 equatorial Africa, although scarcely less widespread 

 in Oceania, that is, in the insular lands lying north- 

 west and north-east of New Guinea. In New 

 Pomerania [New Britain] itself the different villages 

 communicate over wide areas by means of the drum- 

 telegraph, which has also a very wide range in the 

 Amazons valley and in Mexico. The North-west 



"The Childhood of Man: a Popular Account of the Lives. Customs 

 and Thoughts of the Primiiive Races." By Leo Frobenius, translated by 

 .\. H. Keane, Pp. 504 ; with 415 illustrations. (London : Seeley and Co., 

 Ltd., 1909.) Price i6s. net. 



Americans, too, possess similar instruments." An 

 interesting modification of the drum, according to 

 him, is the apparatus that is fastened to a bow in 

 Mangbattuland. He makes the interesting sugges- 

 tion (p. 99) that " the drum is a hybrid sort of instru- 

 ment, one part of which, the sounding-case, owes its 

 origin to the pounding of corn; the other, the skin, 

 to the measured beat in leather-dressing." The most 

 valuable portion of his account of picture-writing is 

 taken from Hoffman's (not " Hoffmann ") contribu- 

 tion to Garrick iVIallery's great monograph, to which 

 he does not allude by name. 



In the chapter on " skull- worship and head-hunt- 

 ing " he refers to the well-known fact that the pre- 

 servation of skulls by some people is to ensure the 

 assistance or protection of the spirit of the dead man, 

 which in the next world becomes the servant of who- 

 ever captured his skull. Although he does not say 

 so, scalp-collecting had probablv a similar significance, 

 as probably had the bunches of human hair which 

 are inserted in some shields from Borneo and Celebes. 

 In dealing with fetishism he says (p. 184) : — 

 " So long, for instance, as the owners of the ancestral 

 images remember the names and the personalities of the 

 dtnd represented by them, so long will the object retain 



NO. 2041, VOL. 79] 



ihe type identical in character, essentially the same. But 

 when the memory dies out while the image remains, it 

 will soon happen that the wooden figtires will acquire the 

 general significance of a sacred object without any per- 

 sonal value." " When . . . the negro sees any unusual 

 object, he is at once taken with a certain feeling of anxiety, 

 a certain perplexity, and he is ready to believe in a dis- 

 play of power in this object, which exceeds the usual, the 

 commonplace, (o the extent that the thing itself looks 

 strange or weird. To put it clearly, the negro attributes 

 a supernatural power to every fresh appearance, to any 

 new object which in any way departs from the ordinary, 

 the known, the intelligible. For him it is uncanny " 

 (pp. 185-6). 



But the author does not pay sufficient attention to 

 Ihe fact that a fetish is credited with mysterious 

 powers owing to its being the habitation, temporary 

 or permanent, of a spiritual being, or as being the 

 vehicle or means by which the .spirit communicates 

 with his worshippers. The chapter on secret societies 

 and masks is of great interest; it deals mainly with 

 West African conditions, but in the next chapter the 

 author describes the mide of the Ojibways. The 

 chapter on sacred animals is scarcely adequate, and 

 totemism he regards, like Mr. Andrew Lang — of 



