REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
The Natural History of the Musical Bow. — Mr. Henry Balfour, 
the distinguished curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, has 
recently published a monograph of eighty-seven pages, with many 
illustrations, upon the Musical Bow. The archer’s bow is regarded 
as the prototype of a large series of stringed instruments of music. 
Though some writers consider the bow as the origin of all stringed 
instruments, Balfour believes that we must refer back to a plurality 
of ancestors for this class of instruments. Three stages are observ- 
able in the transition from the archer’s bow, pure and simple, to the 
bow adapted specially for the production of musical sounds. 
1. The archer’s bow is temporarily converted into a musical in- 
strument at the present day by the tribes of southwest Africa — 
the Damaras, Mandingos, Kaffirs, etc. 
2. The second stage is represented by those monochord instru- 
ments that are practically bows and nothing more, but which are 
made for musical purposes alone. These are found in the Niger 
and Benue river regions, in the Kamerun, Lower Guinea, and Fer- 
nando Po countries. 
3. The third stage is that in which a resonator is attached more 
or less permanently to the bow. To this class belong a large num- 
ber of African instruments covering a wide area, chiefly south of 
the equator, and principally associated with people of the wide- 
spread Bantu stock. 
Mr. Balfour is * convinced that nothing of the nature of a musical : 
bow is represented ” by the figure in the Mexican codex, which Mr. 
Saville identified as a musical instrument used by the ancient Mexi- 
cans. The author believes that the custom of using the musical 
bow in America was introduced from Africa. The accompanying 
map shows that the instrument is used in Patagonia, Bahia, Surinam, 
Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies in the New World. 
It is not found outside of India and Japan in Asia. In Europe the 
bow has been the legendary prototype of musical instruments in 
Greece and Rome. It is not found in Australia. ER 
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