SIR, —Dr. Raymond Firth, in a generous review of my Savage
Civilisation, makes two mistakes which I must beg leave to correct.
Firstly, he says that I took no notes on Malekula. Actually my notebooks fill a small trunk. I did do one thing that I think any anthropologist might benefit by doing, namely, "keep his notebook out of the way until he can do at least two things peculiar to the people he is living among."
Secondly, Dr. Firth says that my interpretations of customs Seem to be derived from my two predecessors (Layard and Deacon) in the central New Hebrides. In fact, F used my own observations and drew my own conclusions, during two years in which I spent much of the time "living native" among inland tribes who are still eating each other and violently anti-European. I was initiated into one tribe, and in another Collected and sacrificed pigs to enter the chiefly society. It would have been foolish if I had derived my generalisations from the previous material, which was gained among coastal natives with very different cultures, under government control, much influenced by European contact and no longer "savage." Of course, I have been influenced by my predecessors all over the Western Pacific ; indeed Dr. Firth's valuable works are among those to which I owe a debt.--I am, Sir, &c., Tom HARRISSON.
Liniversity Museoutt of Ethnology', Cambridge. - . • - :
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