1921.] 
Reviews and Abstracts. 
269 
modern races is open to similar criticism. What ethnologist will for a 
moment consider the abandonment of the established schemes of racial 
classification in favour of one which equates Iberians and Hamites (p. 58), 
and includes within this race Algonquins, Hindus, Hottentots (p. 58), Copts, 
Etruscans, Portuguese, Punjabi, and Moriori (p. 81), and derives from it 
the Semites (p. 67) and those Melanesians who have the hooked nose (p. 85) ? 
Such is the inextricable confusion that results from taking cephalic index 
as the sole guide in racial classification. 
To turn from general questions to details, the presence of the Persephone 
story among the Maoris (p. 86) will come as a surprise to ethnologists, 
as also the presence in Hawaii, Tahiti, and Samoa of shamans and the 
“ forked ” system of relationship. 
That a proportion of Dr. Taylor’s mistakes are due to unfamiliarity 
with the material in which he is working is clear from the fact that 
elsewhere he contrasts the Hawaiian with the “ forked ” system of 
relationship. 
The Australasian student turns with interest to the sections dealing 
with the island region of the Pacific. “ Monolithic monuments like Stone¬ 
henge,” says Dr. Taylor, are widely distributed. “ They have been 
erected throughout Micronesia and Polynesia, even to Easter Island.” 
“ Monolithic ” is presumably a slip of the pen for “ megalithic.” But the 
slip is repeated, and it is not the kind of mistake expected from one who 
speaks in tones of authority on ethnological subjects. On page 84 of 
Dr. Taylor’s second article the cephalic index of the Maori is placed at 78. 
The best authority on this point is the late Professor John Scott, who has 
shown that the average in the north of New Zealand is 73-3 and in the 
south 75 - 9.* This may seem a small point, but as the whole of Dr. Taylor’s 
scheme is based on cephalic indices, accuracy in these figures is essential. 
As regards language, the student of the Pacific will gasp to find, at 
page 109, Maori grouped with south-eastern Papuan and Malay as an 
early Aryan tongue, while Samoan, Hawaiian, and Tahitian are grouped 
together and distinguished from it as early Alpine. Nor is his astonish¬ 
ment allayed on finding, in fig. 9 (the lava-flow analogy), Samoan shown 
as a fossil language underlying Korean. Maori is shown a little farther 
toward the periphery overlying Malay, while farther outward still is Moriori 
overlying north Melanesian. If in this diagram the cephalic index of the 
Maori be corrected as noted above, then the Maori should appear outside 
the Moriori and overlying the south Melanesian. Thus the alteration of 
a single cephalic index upsets the lava-flow analogy. Nor is it easy to see 
how the Maori-Moriori facts can be forced to fit to Dr. Taylor’s general 
racial scheme. 
In the statement, “ It has recently been shown that the Mela¬ 
nesians (77) (akin to the Moriori, Caroline, and Solomon Islanders) 
built the famous Easter Island monuments,” a number of inferences are 
involved, every one of them highly disputable. It will suffice here to 
warn the general reader against the statement that the stone structures 
of Easter Island are proved to have been built by Melanesians. The 
matter is still under discussion, and many facts will have to be accumu- 
lated and set in order before we can say with any degree of confidence 
what racial strain predominated in the builders of the ruins at Easter 
Island. 
* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. 26, p. 63, 1894. 
