Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/750

This page needs to be proofread.

726 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

be considered very carefully by those who are near enough to the chil- dren to get their point of view. That the author has not failed to study this problem is evident from pp. 132-34.

The reviewer who looks only at the reading text may consider the work too deductive, and fear too great influence of culture-epoch theories; but a careful examination of the plan of use will show that the whole scheme is firmly rooted in the present, however far it may reach into the past.

FRANK A. MANNY.

ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOLS,

New York.

Queries in Ethnography. By A. G. KELLER. New York : Long- mans, Green & Co., 1903. Pp. ix + 77.

THAT small manuals of directive questions, intended for the field worker, have value, all will admit. The author of the manual before us correctly states that none of those before issued, in reference to ethnography, is satisfactory. Broca's Instructions anthropologiques and Schmidt's Anthropologische Methoden are models, but both are confined to somatology, a department of anthropology, which Dr. Keller inten- tionally omits. The nearest approach to a handy, complete, general manual is the Anthropological Institute's Notes and Queries. This includes somatology, but also covers the field that Keller has in mind. It suffers sadly, as indeed Keller states, from its " composite production " and "the multiplicity of its authors." In a footnote Dr. Keller refers to a number of rather inaccessible and not fully pertinent German questionnaires. Curiously he omits all mention of the "Instructions" at various times issued by French anthropological and ethnological societies, for use among specific populations, as also the valuable manuals put out by the Folk-Lore Society and the American Folk-Lore Society all of which are actually in his field. Keller gives a list of 912 queries, which are carefully thought out, well stated, and, on the whole, well arranged. They cover the whole field of ethnography. The book will prove useful and will direct travelers, missionaries, physicians, and "the interested amateur" to do good service in foreign lands. It would be possible to pick some flaws and raise some ques- tions, but it would be difficult to improve the book, which represents a great deal of honest labor. Primarily intended for the field worker, the book can be well used in the class-room. A class of students taken over it in free discussion would gain more than from formal study of most text-books. jr. g.