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This volume gives a condensed but representative account of the sexual life and customs of primitive peoples. The topics covered are: Modesty
among primitive people; pre-marital freedom and conjugal fidelity; courtship customs; marriage; birth and foeticide; ignorance of the process of generation; mutilation of the sex organs; maturity and decline. A useful bibliography is appended in which, however, we miss the valuable work of Karsch-Haack on homosexuality among savages.
The risk books such as these run is in not being able successfully to avoid the impression that primitive peoples are to be treated as a unit. The ordinary mind tends to regard them as such and is apt to forget that the difference between one such race and another may be quite as great as that between either and ourselves. This risk is fairly well avoided in the present volume, care being taken to quote concrete facts while restricting the number of generalisations made. It is a book that can be commended to those desiring preliminary information on this topic. The translation has been very well done.