THE TYLOR "FESTSCHRIFT."
Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tyler. By Various Authors. (Clarendon Press. 15s. net.)—What the Germans call a Festschrift is not a common institution in this country, but it might with advantage be more frequent. The idea of it is that, on some occasion when it is convenient to honour a distinguished representative of scholarship or science, many of the younger men who have followed in his footsteps write papers bearing on the subject of his life-work, and these are published in a volume and dedicated to him. Some time ago Dr. Furnivall was thus greeted by students of literature ; it is now the turn of Dr. Tylor to receive a birthday gift from anthro- pologists. Anthropology is a quite modern science, and Dr. Tylor shares with Lord Avebury the honour of having founded it in this country. Mr. Andrew Lang prefaces the handsome volume in which these essays are collected by an appreciation of Dr. Tylor's work, in which its main features are pleasantly dis- criminated. Incidentally we learn that Dr. Tylor collaborated in the "Ballade of Primitive Man," contributing three of its six stanzas. It will be an agreeable exercise for the young critic to determine which they are. The essays included in this volume are thoroughly worthy of the occasion. Perhaps the most generally interesting is that of Mr. J. G. Frazer on "Folk-lore in the Old Testament," which is an admirable piece of work. Messrs. Crawley, Sidney Hartland, and N. W. Thomas write on some problems in early sexual relationships. Mr. Henry Balfour gives a remarkably learned study of the fire-piston, used as a substitute for matches in countries and ages where and when those invaluable adjuncts of civilisation were not discovOred. Dr. Westermarck contributes a suggestive paper on "the trans- ference of conditional curses in Morocco," and Mr. Arthur Thomson describes his researches on the symbolical designs of verge watches. The book will be a welcome addition to all anthropological libraries, and we could not give it higher praise than to say that it is quite worthy of the great scholar whose
name it bears. Not the least valuable of its contents is the full and excellent bibliography of Dr. Tylor's own work which has been compiled by Miss Freire-Marreco.
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