,212 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XII. No. 300 



his wife's family. This happened in fourteen cases, while if dis- 

 tributed by chance it would have happened in eight cases only. 

 This implies a causal connection between the customs of avoidance 

 and residence, and suggests as a reason, that the husband, being 

 considered an interloper in the wife's family, must be treated as a 

 stranger, or, as we should say, " he is not recognized." 



The custom of naming the parent from the child prevails among 

 more than thirty peoples : thus Moffat was generally known in 

 Africa as Ra-Mary, or father of Mary. This custom proves, on ex- 

 amination, to adhere closely to those of residence and avoidance, 

 the three occurring together among eleven peoples ; that is, more 

 than six times as often as might be expected to happen by chance 

 occurrence. The connection of these customs finds a satisfactory 

 explanation in the accounts given of the Cree Indians, where the 

 husband lives in his wife's house, but never speaks to his parents- 

 in-law till his first child is born. This alters the whole situation ; 

 for, though the father is not a member of the family, his child is, 

 and when he receives a new name, meaning 'father of the new- 

 born child,' the whole is brought to a logical conclusion by the fam- 

 ily recognizing him as soon as he takes this name. 



Dr. Tylor has inquired into the two great divisions of human 

 society, — the matriarchal and patriarchal, or, as he prefers to call 

 them, the maternal and paternal systems. In the former, descent 

 and inheritance follow the mother's side, and the guardian of the 

 children is the maternal uncle, not the father, whose assertion of 

 paternal rights belongs to the paternal system with descent and in- 

 heritance on his side. The problem to be solved is, which of the 

 two systems is the more primitive ? Former inquirers have judged 

 that the maternal system is the earlier ; but Dr. Tylor is the first 

 to give a firm basis to this theory by showing numerically that fre- 

 quently customs of the maternal stage survive in the paternal, while 

 no instance of the reverse is known. The author believes that a 

 chief underlying cause of both these systems is still traceable in 

 society. His tables show that among 65 peoples the husband 

 attaches himself permanently to his wife's family ; among 76 such, 

 temporary residence is followed by removal to a paternal home ; 

 and in 151 cases the paternal home is resorted to from the first. 

 The changes brought about by the man ceasing to be in the 

 hands of his wife's kinsmen, and becoming lord of a household of 

 his own, he considers as the cause of transformation of maternal 

 into paternal society. 



These results of a comparatively limited application of Dr. Tylor's 

 ingenious method prove that it is pre-eminently adapted to the study 

 of human institutions and inventions, and will undoubtedly prove a 

 great help in the study of the history and development of mankind. 



Discovery of Flint Implements at Southall, Eng- 

 land. — In the May number of the Proceedings of the Geologists' 

 Association, John Allen Brown describes the discovery of the greater 

 portion of a mammoth associated with human relics under circum- 

 stances of more than ordinary interest. The geological formation 

 of this district being well known, the author was able to ascertain 

 with a reasonable degree of exactness the probable origin of these 

 remains, particularly the circumstances under which the carcass was 

 deposited, and how it happened that its immediate neighborhood 

 proved to be so rich in human relics. He shows that either the 

 banks of a large river of the past must have existed near the spot, 

 or the rising ground of an island in the stream. The mammoth 

 either drifted into the shallow, tranquil water close to the bank, or 

 was driven into the clayey silt of the shore, in which its remains 

 were found by the paleolithic hunters who have left us so many of 

 their implements as evidence of their presence in this locality at the 

 time. ' The occurrence of so many implements at about the same 

 level is indicative of an old inhabited land surface in their immedi- 

 ate vicinity, especially as most of them show little effect of rolling 

 with the stones of the gravel, and have not been carried far, if 

 removed at all, by the stream. A spear-head found in contact with 

 the bones leads directly to the conclusion that it had actually been 

 used, with others, for hunting the animal or cutting into its flesh. 

 At any rate, it seems difiicult to avoid the inference that there is an 

 historical connection between the remains of the elephant and the 

 implements found in such close proximity to them. The subse- 

 quent alteration in the currents, and probably in the channel of 



the stream, by which these interesting relics of the remote past were 

 covered up, tells the same tale of old habitable land surfaces, inun- 

 dated, eroded, and destroyed, and new ones formed, which is notice- 

 able all over the Thames valley. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



A Handbook to the Land-Charters, and other Saxonic Documents^ 

 By John Earle. Oxford, Clarendon Pr. 12°. (New York,- 

 Macmillan.) 



This book will be very valuable to students of the early history 

 and institutions of England. The author's name is sufficient guar- 

 anty for the general accuracy of the work, and the selections he 

 here gives have both historical and philological value. They are 

 mostly grants of land, either from the King in council or from some 

 subordinate authority ; some of them being made to individuals, 

 and others to religious houses. The land of the Teutonic settlers 

 In England was at first divided into three portions : one being as- 

 signed to individuals, and made hereditary in their families ; an- 

 other given to townships as a corporate possession ; while the third 

 remained the property of the nation, under the name of ' folk land.* 

 It was from this last portion that the grants here dealt with were 

 made, subject always to the three burdens of military service, repair 

 of bridges, and repair of fortresses. The greater part of the extant 

 documents are grants to religious bodies, owing, as Mr. Earle re- 

 marks, to their having a better chance of preservation. The great 

 importance of such title-deeds, and the difficulty in early times of 

 detecting spurious ones, led to the forgery of many; and Mr. 

 Earle gives examples of these of a real date subsequent to the 

 Norman Conquest, but professing to be centuries older. The 

 greater part, however, of his selections are genuine documents, and 

 their historical importance is obvious. He has not confined him- 

 self, though, to land-grants, but gives examples of wills, contracts,, 

 and other papers of interest. They are all written either in mediae- 

 val Latin or in Anglo-Saxon, or more often in a mixture of the 

 two; and, as an aid to their study, the author gives a glossary of 

 the Saxon words, and of such Latin words as require elucidation. 



In his introduction, Mr. Earle treats the general form and 

 character of the charters, and then takes up the subject of land- 

 tenure in those early times, discussing particularly the origin of the 

 lord of the manor. The old theory of Blackstone and others was, 

 that the lord was the original owner of the soil, and that some of 

 his tenants succeeded in acquiring a customary right to the lands- 

 they held of him, which afterwards developed into a legal right. 

 On the other hand, the historical school maintains that the town- 

 ship, or village community, was the original land-owner, and that 

 the manorial lords of later times were usurpers. Mr. Earle's view 

 is different from either of these. He holds that there was from the- 

 very first settlement of the Germanic tribes in England a class of 

 military chieftains known at first as gesithas, and afterwards as 

 thanes, one of whom was, as a rule, attached to each township. 

 They were commissioned ofiic^rs of the King, having military and 

 police duties to perform, and wielding a certain authority over the 

 township for that purpose. They were in no sense proprietors oF 

 the town lands, but had certain land of their own in the neighbor- 

 hood ; and it was these officers who afterwards developed into the 

 lords of the manor. This theory is not free from difficulties, as- 

 the author himself recognizes ; but it is certainly plausible, and well 

 deserves the attention of historical students. 



Tenure and Toil. By JOHN GIBBONS. Philadelphia, Lippin- 

 cott. 12"^. Si. 50. 

 This work is another of those attempts, now so common, to- 

 cure all the ills of the body politic. Mr. Gibbons is impressed with 

 the evils that flow from poverty and the unequal distribution of" 

 wealth, as well as with those attending the conflicts of labor and 

 capital ; and, like many other persons, he exaggerates them till 

 they appear of portentous dimensions. Those evils, he thinks, 

 arise from " the false relations existing between the people and the 

 land, and between labor and capital ; " and the remedy for them 

 "can be found only in legislation." The remedies he proposes,, 

 however, are for the most part such as have been proposed by others, 

 and those that are new do not strike us as either wise or adequate to- 



