many countries also symbolic oaths invoking evils on the perjurer are to be met with, as when the Ostyaks in Siberia swear in court by laying their hand on a bear’s head, meaning that a bear will kill them if they lie. It shows the carelessness with which Europeans are apt to regard the customs of other nations, that in English courts a Chinese is called upon to swear by breaking a saucer, under the entirely erroneous belief that this symbolic curse is a Chinese judicial oath. The most undeveloped forms of government are only to be met with in a few outlying regions, as among some of the lower Esquimaux or Rocky Mountain tribes, where life goes on with hardly any rule beyond such control as the strong man may have over his own household. Much oftener travellers have opportunity of studying, in a more or less crude state, the types of government which prevail in higher culture. It is of especial interest to see men of the whole tribe gathered in assembly (the primitive _agora_) to decide some question of war or migration. Not less instructive are the proceedings of the council of old men (the primitive _senate_), who, among American tribes or the hill tribes of India, transact the business of the tribe; they are represented at a later social stage by the village-elders of the Hindus or the Russians. Among the problems which present themselves among nations below the civilised level is that of the working of the patriarchal system, still prevailing among such tribes as the Bedaween, while often the balance of power is seen adjusting itself between the patriarchal heads of families and the leaders who obtain authority by success in war. The struggle between the hereditary chief or king and the military despot, who not only usurps his place but seeks to establish hereditary monarchy in his own line, is one met with from low to high levels of national life. The traveller’s attention may be called to the social forces which do their work independently of men in authority, and make society possible, even when there is little visible authority at all. The machinery of government described in books is often much less really powerful than public opinion, which controls men’s conduct in ways which are so much less conspicuous that they have hardly yet been investigated with the care they deserve.