Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899Various
Religion
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
We have already published a fairly comprehensive review of _Richard
Semon's In the Australian Bush_,[13] based upon the German original,
by Prof. E. P. Evans, in the fifty-second volume of the Monthly
(November, 1897). But little needs to be added to what Professor Evans
has said of the book besides announcing the appearance of the English
edition, the translation for which was written under the author's own
superintendence, and the contents of which do not differ in any
important particular from the German impression. Professor Semon went
to Australia on a special zoölogical mission, and spent two years
there. His purpose was the study of the wonderful Australian fauna,
the oviparous mammals, marsupials, and ceratodus (lungfish). These
animals represent forms which, with a few notable exceptions, have
long since become extinct in other countries, where they have to be
studied in such parts of their bony forms as happen to have been
preserved in the rocks, while here they can be examined alive and in
the flesh--"living fossils," as the author fittingly calls them, links
between the present age and one of the geological periods of the past.
His observations on these subjects are in course of publication in a
special scientific work, not quite half of which has appeared. The
present volume consists in the notes of travel and adventure, the
dealing with men, the anthropological studies, and what we might call
the _obiter_ observations of the expedition. Almost simultaneously
with Professor Semon's narrative we have from the same publishers
another book, on _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_,[14] which
deals more fully, exclusively, and perhaps more expertly with the
anthropology of a part of the Australian continent. Of the authors,
Mr. _Gillen_ has spent the greater part of the past twenty years in
the center of the continent, and as sub-protector of the aborigines
has had exceptional opportunities of coming in contact with the Arunta
tribe; and both of them have been made fully initiated members of that
tribe. Though both about Australia, the two books do not cover the
same ground. Australia is very large, and its physical conditions are
such that the groups of tribes inhabiting the various regions have for
a long period of time been isolated from one another and have followed
different lines in development. Professor Semon's observations were
made in the Burnett district of northeastern Queensland, while those
recorded in the work of Spencer and Gillen were made in the very
center of South Australia and of the continent. Consequently, in
reading them we read really about different things. In addition to the
investigation of various customs, such as those connected with
initiation and magic, special attention has been paid by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen to the totemic system and to matters connected with
the social organization of the tribes; and here again the authors
insist upon the differences between the groups of tribes, and that the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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