Having thus dealt briefly with principles of interpretation I perhaps ought to stop short, since an anthropologist as such has nothing to do with the bearing of his science on questions of political administration. Mrs. McGovern, however, has a good deal to say about the means whereby it is proposed to convert head-hunters into peaceable and useful citizens. Without going into the facts, upon which I am incompetent to throw any fresh light, I might venture to make some observations of a general nature that depend on a principle already mentioned. This principle was, that to understand a people is to envisage its ideal. The practical corollary, I suggest, is that, to preserve a people, one must preserve its ideal so far as to leave its vital and vitalizing elements intact. In other words, in purging that ideal, as may be done and ought to be done when it is sought to lift a backward people out of savagery, great care should be taken not to wreck their whole scheme of values, to cause all that has hitherto made life worth living for them to seem cheap and futile. Given sympathetic insight into their dream of the good life--one that is, probably, not unlike ours in its main essentials--it ought to prove feasible to curtail noxious practices by substituting better ways of satisfying the same needs. Contact with civilization is apt to produce among savages a paralysis of the will to live. More die of depression than of disease or drink. They lose their interest in existence. Their spirit is broken. When the policy is to preserve them, the mere man of science can lend a hand by pointing out what indeed every experienced administrator knows by the time he has bought his experience at other people’s expense. Given, then, the insider’s point of view, a sense of what the savage people itself wants and is trying for, and given also patience in abundance, civilization may effectively undertake to fulfil, instead of destroying. R. R. MARETT. INTRODUCTION _Among the Head-hunters of Formosa_ contains the substance of observations made during a two-years’ stay in Formosa--from September 1916 to September 1918. The book is written for the general reader, rather than for the specialist in anthropology or ethnology. Hence many details--especially those concerning minor differences in manners and customs among the various aboriginal tribes--have been omitted; for these, while perhaps of interest to the specialist, would prove wearying to the layman. Inadequate as the treatment of the subject may seem to the anthropologist, I venture to hope that such information as the book contains may stimulate interest, and perhaps encourage further investigation, before it is too late, into the tribal customs and habits of a little-known, and rapidly disappearing, people.