ways, into a separate volume to precede the major treatise. It is entirely regrettable that the latter could not have been completed, but if a choice could have been made, it would have been better that Folkways should receive the preference. Since its publication the scientific recognition accorded to it has been steadily increasing. What place it will finally make for itself cannot yet be said; but no other of Professor Sumner's books has approached it in profundity and in lasting importance.
Like Darwin, Sumner was an indefatigable collector of facts. His industry was truly discouraging to those about him. Steadily, relentlessly, day by day, year in and year out, he explored his literature until the sum of his readings was almost incredible; a friend, he told me, asked him how he had ever found time to read the multitude of books and articles referred to in Folkways, and he had answered that he did not himself know. And his bibliographies were never padded by the inclusion of matter which he had only scanned; nor were the references to publications in the more remote foreign languages second-hand or gotten by way of a translator and then listed as from personal reading. As bearing on the industry and the insatiable scientific curiosity of the man, his attainment of control over languages is extraordinary evidence. The late Prof. Edward Bourne used to tell how, in the middle eighties, Sumner was apparently unfamiliar with other modern foreign languages than French and German; for upon a certain occaaon he had said doubtfully of the word "naranja" that he supposed that it was Spanish for "orange." But shortly thereafter he apparently felt that he must extend his range, for certain of his dictionaries, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, and others, bear acquisition dates of the late eighties. Within a few years he had acquired the two Scandinavian tongues, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and Polish. None of these, apparently, was begun before the age of forty-five; and it was perfectly characteristic of Sumner that he "ground the paradigms," as he said, in all cases, and even went to the extent of translating all the exercises in his
