MELANESIAN MANNERS.•
Ma. RIVERS, whose previous book on the Todas was an admirable example of "scientific method as applied to the collection and recording of ethnographical facts," now pub- lishes in two most interesting volumes the first instalment of the work done by the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia. He has expended great industry, allied to that sympathetic insight without which the task of the anthro- pologist can seldom be successfully carried out, in collecting the social and religious ideas of the natives of Melanesia, and Las thus furnished a rich and trustworthy addition to our materials for studying the evolution of primitive society. In his first volume he gives a detailed account of his discoveries in the Banks Islands—to which five chapters are devoted—. the Tones Islands, the New Hebrides, the Santa Cruz Islands, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tikopia—a little-known but extremely instructive microcosm—Tonga, Samoa, Nine, and the Hawaian Islands. The second volume is occupied with the theoretical discussion of the material presented in the first volume, and ie really a series of brief but very able essays on such subjects as social organization, the laws of descent and inheritance, marriage, funeral ceremonies, totem. lam, religion and magic, language, and so forth. Mr. Rivera is led to the conclusion that modern Melanesian culture is of a highly complex origin, having arisen through the settlement of two immigrant peoples, named after their respective use of betel and kava, amongst an earlier population. Traces of this oldest stratum are still to be found here and there, and indicate that it possessed a dual social organization with matrilineal descent, accompanied by a condition of communism and a singular gerontocracy, or state of dominance of the old men so pronounced that they were able to monopolize all the young women of the community—much as the old stag drives 'away all his younger rivals from his harem of does, until he is ousted by a well-aimed horn-thrust and his place is taken by a more vigorous fighter. Mr. Rivera's theories are far too learned and elaborate to be criticized here, but we commend them to the careful study of all anthropologists. There is a delightful touch of nature in his description of the Tamale secret society • Th. /7■Igary of Maa.sion Society. By W. H. B. Rivera. 2 vein. Cam- bridge at the Ilniveraity Prem. DN. net.] -
known as Kwaaanomenamena "Very small children, even those just born, can enter this The hat is made of the leaf of a bread-fruit tree, split and tied in a peculiar way. Entrance can be bought very cheaply, a pipe fall of tobacco even being enough." Children are much the same all the world over.
Previous page
