MacCurdy has achieved a brilliant success in effecting the necessary condensation, and nevertheless contriving to present the most important features of man's industrial and social evolution from the close of the Old Stone Age on to the dawn of history. These offer problems of interpretation quite as perplexing as any found in the earlier stages, as, for instance, the designs from Gavr'inis and the Table des Marchands pictured in figures 301 and 302, which Mac Curdy takes for representations of a hafted ax, and a shield ornamented with ax handles. Other observers see in the design from Gavr'inis a primitive plow, and explain the groups of "ax handles" on the supporting stone of the Table des Marchands as conventionalized blades of wheat. The latter view is somewhat helped by the fact that a disk with rays, supposed to represent the sun, is indicated in the middle of the "wheat stalks." This does not appear in MacCurdy's figure reproduced from de Mortillet, but is clearly seen in a photograph of the same stone by le Rouzic (1910). A few phrases, such as the "prow lines of the stern," or "some rodent, probably the marten" are obviously oversights such as will at times escape the vigilance of author and editor and slip into the best regulated book.

To sum up: Professor MacCurdy's account of prehistoric man does not always make clear the part that rests upon indisputable evidence, and the part where the insufficient evidence has been pieced with hypothesis and conjecture. In this respect it will present grave difficulties to beginners in prehistory, not yet familiar with the nature of the supporting evidence. On the other hand, the exceptionally ample and accurate lists and classifications of sites given throughout the text and in the appendices are invaluable, not only to beginners but to everyone who has occasion to verify localities or references.

No report on Human Origins would be adequate that failed to do. justice to the extraordinarily sympathetic comprehension with which Professor MacCurdy pictures some of the salient features of man's early development. Take, for instance, this passage from his chapter on Paleolithic art:

From the standpoint of priority of antiquity then, the artist has special reason to be proud. He follows a calling that had its worthy devotees ages before any other method of leaving imperishable records of human thought was known. Man was artist before he was the maker of even hieroglyphs; he tamed his imagination and his hand to produce at will objects of beauty long ages before he tamed the first wild beast or made the humble plant world

do his bidding. The farmer, whose calling we are apt to think of as representing the life primeval, is a mere upstart in comparison with one who practices the fine arts.

Both Professor MacCurdy and the readers of "Human Origins" are to be congratulated on this new, vivid, and scholarly reconstruction of the life and environment of prehistoric man.

C. D. MATTHEW

Medicine, Magic and Religion. (The Fitz Patrick Lectures delivered before The Royal College of Physicians of London in 1915 and 1916.) W. H. R. RIVERS. With a preface by G. ELLIOT SMITH. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1924. vi, 147 pp. The major part of this little book presents a history of primitive and early medicine. It shows the late Doctor Rivers at his best, and we must all feel indebted to his literary executor, Professor Elliot Smith, for having rescued these fugitive essays and made them generally accessible. So far as I know, this is the only serious attempt to characterize the major areas of the globe with reference to theories of disease and the correlated practices. A pioneer effort of this sort is bound to err on particular points, but Rivers's sketch remains a highly creditable undertaking.

The most serious mistake I have noted relates to the distribution of the belief in soul-kidnapping as the cause of illness. Rivers thinks that it is limited to Indonesia, Papuo-Melanesia, and America, with traces in West Africa, but writes: "We do not know of it in Asia ...." (p. 79). The fact is that it is prominent among the Chukchi; and likewise, I learn from Doctor Sternberg, among Mongolic and Turkic peoples. In view of Doctor Rivers's implicit rather than expressed tendency to connect American and Indonesian culture, the continuous distribution of the trait on both sides of Bering Strait is a phenomenon of considerable significance. In general, Doctor Rivers's exposition of most points in this book is characterized by commendable restraint, though the very formulation of certain questions for instance, as to the single or multiple origin of Four as a sacred number (p. 88)-indicates his sympathies.

The distribution of the sweat-bath in Melanesia, New Guinea, Polynesia, Africa and America, as well as in Northern Europe, (p. 102) is certainly highly suggestive and merits closer study. It may be worth pointing out that the sweat-bath is not always a vapor-bath

in America, as Doctor Rivers seems to assume. Altogether the treatise suggest's many special inquiries of ethnographic interest and contains much valuable detail on the Oceanian area with which the author was particularly conversant.

ROBERT H. LOWIE

AMERICA

The North American Indian. EDWARD S. CURTIS. Volume XII: The Hopi. 1922.

Among all the voluminous ethnographical literature concerning the Hopi there has been till now no orderly survey of their complex culture. It has been the simplest things about their life that one learned last of all, accidentally usually in the mass of specialized ceremonial detail. It is only with the publication of the latest volume of this series sponsored by J. Pierpont Morgan, The Hopi, that this is ended. The book is a clear and observant record of the various aspects of their life.

It is of course as beautiful a volume as our libraries boast, and one that is written lucidly and with competence. From an anthropological point of view it performs two major services: it is, first, that much needed summary of a Pueblo, culture, the only one that has ever been done that will serve as an introduction to their habits of thought and is yet of such completeness as to be ethnographically of value; second, it contains a very considerable amount of new or variant material of comparative interest.

As a summary of a Pueblo life it is as successful as a strictly descriptive book well might be. The account of the katcina cult, for example, (pp. 170-177). with the generalized description of procedure and its intimate association with the kivas, is admirable. It is just such an account as a sympathetic and intelligent inquirer has need of. The shortcomings of the book as an introduction to Pueblo life arise as a defect of its virtue, for it is wholly descriptive, and it does not make any attempt other than lucidity of statement to guide the student through the unaccustomed mazes. It would have made the large patterns of their culture clearer to set off the katcina cult, for example, somewhat definitely from their other fraternity-organized activities of curing and weather-control; and it would be helpful to find an analysis of the various organizations of the kiva, and the

fraternity, and the clan in their several functions in everyday life.. Such a plotting of distinct activities and thought-patterns is outside the scope of the book.

This straightforward setting down of information, on the other hand, makes the ethnographical information exceedingly easy to use as comparative material. The account of his initiation by the only surviving member of the Pos wimi, the extinct curing-society of medicine-men, fills an important gap in the so-far recorded material. This society was made up of a very small number of initiated medicine-men who met at the time of the winter solstice ceremony, "looked through people" in the performing of their cures, and initiated by clapping a crystal "heart" into the breast of the initiate. The likeness to the practices of Zuñi and eastern Southwest curing societies is borne out also in the choir of five who sang for them at their ceremonies. Some relative of the newly-initiated medicineman was supposed to die in consequence of his initiation.

The clan data presumably refer to Walpi alone, and in view of the wide discrepancies in the various pueblos, it would have been helpful to have had it specifically assigned to this village. The date at which it was collected would also have been valuable, for Mr. Curtis and Mr. Myers made their first trip to Hopi in 1900, and have gathered material at intervals ever since. We have the list published by Dr. Fewkes in 1900, and a recent unpublished list of Dr. Parsons, and a comparison of the three emphasizes the stability of the native. groupings of the linked clans. In all three lists there are some singlymentioned variants that do not occur in the others, but the main alignment into twelve groups of linked clans is stable. The main divergence of the Curtis list from both others is its omission, for the Bear group, of the usual linked Bluebird-Spider group, and the substitution of Hemlock.

Hopi proper names are clan-owned, but they are not the property of the clan of the man or woman who bears the name, but of the clan of the man or woman who bestowed it. Curtis has included a valuable list of 120 names with their translation and clan-ownership, and the clan affiliations of the person who bears the name, both on his father's and his mother's side. The majority of the names are given by the father's clan, and in some groups this is overwhelming. Of twentyeight names owned in the Tobacco-Rabbit clan, twenty-six are borne by children of Tobacco men. Nevertheless in a total of 120 names

recorded, only 77 are borne by "children of the clan." In Sichumovi, at least, according to Dr. Parsons, the person bestowing the name is the ceremonial father who takes the child through the Powamu whippings, and initiates him into his own New Fire Society. If this is true also in Walpi, it will give a valuable indication of the relative frequency of different methods of affiliation with these societies. It seems that in Hopi theory the ceremonial father is from the maternal household of the father, but we know also that a sick child may be "given" to a person of unnamed affiliation to be initiated by him, if the child is cured, into the New Fire society of which he is a member. The trespass initiation is recorded also. The bearing of all these upon the clan-owned name should be enlightening.

This table of clan names is recorded in connection with a genealogy of 221 names, which was used in the gathering of kinship terms. Not only the use of these which accords with native theory is given, but also the secondary applications as shown by the terms which were applied to each other by the persons in the genealogy.

Confirmation is given of the practice of removing the fangs from snakes before the Snake dance. The method is that described in the confessions owned by the American Museum of Natural History. As a whole the descriptions of ceremonial are valuable as introductions, rather than as adding to already known detail. Some things of considerable significance escaped the attention of the authors, such as the clan basis of organization for the winter solstice ceremony.

The volume contains also valuable mythological material. The clan myths, compared with those already published and with Miss Ruth Bunzel's manuscript, are in their diversity of inc dent a selfsufficient rebuttal of their historicity. Among the incidents of the other tales never before recorded for the Hopi is the omnipresent Pueblo story of the marriage-test in which the fine-ground meal must adhere to a polished shell; and a well-acculturated variant of the northern incident of compassing your enemy's death by a contest. in swinging from a tree that snaps back with great force.

All anthropologists are under a debt to Mr. Curtis and Mr. Myers for this volume, and we must regret that it is so rare and precious a book as not to be available for ready use. It should be accessible not only to anthropologists, but to their students, and to all who are interested in a complex and integrated culture.

RUTH F. BENEDICT