of the origin of man triumphantly asked for the production of the missing link. There seems now to be a little extra reliance placed by some anthropologists on the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus. Mr. Keane boldly states, "This pliocene inhabitant of Java may thus, in a sense, be taken as the longsought-for "First Man"; and as it is not very probable that he can have had any undoubtedly human precursors, the Indo-Malaysian inter-tropical lands may also, with some confidence, be regarded as the cradle of the human family." Reference of approval is also made to the views of the Danish anthropologist, Herluf Winge, who considers that Man is more closely allied to the Gibbon than to the other Simians,—"a conclusion also pointed at by the Java skull."
The wide reading of the author is perceptible on every page, and this is the most necessary equipment for the ethnologist. Very much information must, and can only be obtained from travellers, who are frequently men without ethnological insight, or, in other words, possessed of local prejudice. Hence travellers' tales do not always agree, and the key to the reconciliation of their narratives is not the invocation of fiction, but often the clear understanding of psychological variation and racial warps. Thus, how much is still to be learned as to the disgusting practice of cannibalism, of which Herrera is quoted as saying of the Colombian aborigines, "the living are the grave of the dead; for the husband has been seen to eat his wife, the brother his brother or sister, the son his father." And yet we are astonished to read that this savage brutalism is condoned by the Cocomas of the Marañon, who said "it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth," while a baptized member of the Mayorunas of the Upper Amazons "complained on his deathbed that he would not now provide a meal for his Christian friends, but must be devoured by worms."
We cannot quote further from this mine of information relating to our own species; it describes many of the early errors which still cling to our onward march, and is a sound guide to events in our history of which the most ancient written records are but of yesterday.
