No. 408.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 973 
planting a tree on the grave instead of burying the dead in the 
forest. Hence come sacred posts, stakes, and scepters. Masks 
refer back to this cult in two ways. First, in some places the dead 
are buried in peculiar little huts, and hut temples readily arise. An 
imitation of these “ spirit huts” is seen in the tent- or hut-like head 
coverings, and shoulder- or loin-coverings that form a large chapter 
in African costumes. It would be hard otherwise to explain the 
apparent superfluity of clothing in a climate demanding the opposite. 
The second development is from the human skull: starting from 
skull dances with the crania tied about the waist, or held whole or 
in part in the mouth, the transition is easy to skull masks, conven- 
tionalized traces of which are to be seen in some of the masks 
pictured in the text (p. 182). 
The work is not too analytic to be interesting; the first part is 
full of traveler’s tales set down by the author (apparently not an 
African visitor himself) with an Herodotus-like naiveté. The illus- 
trations are numerous and good, but beset with a vicious system of 
numbering which makes reference a difficult task. There are some 
misprints in the German, and quite a number in the little English 
text quoted. 
Towards the end the author makes comparisons between the 
masks and customs of Africa and Oceanica, which prove to him a 
connection between them, and that the African instances point to 
more eastern sources. 
The conclusion is partly as follows : “It should not be assumed 
that the subject is exhausted in the present work. Still, no such 
complete handling has as yet been devoted to the masks of a primi- 
tive people. The work may ask for some indulgence from its nature. 
Whoever wanders in unbeaten paths, as we do here, must often, like 
the pioneer in his work, find his hand too rough for skilled labor. 
Therefore many questions are still open and many a fault may have 
been committed. . . . 
«I repeat my often expressed wish to strike out from the scien- 
tific order of the day the unhappy nomenclature which so retards 
progress. Words like ‘magician’ (* Zauberer’), ‘fetich,’ are essen- 
tially superfluous. T heir existence naturally gives to the inquirer 
a false idea of science. He thinks his duty done when he has 
dubbed an article as of the class of ‘fetiches.’ I can tell a story 
about that. I enlightened several missionaries to the effect that by 
the word ‘fetich’ absolutely nothing worth while was expressed. 
These gentlemen thereupon sought for the significance of many of 
