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This book represents an unusually excellent piece of work. The author has in a careful and discriminating way collected practically all that is known about the various beliefs and rituals touching on death and immortality in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. In addition to this she has grouped the extensive material in such an orderly way as to make it easy for the reader to consider it point by point. There is very little attempt at interpretation of the data. No reference is made to psycho-analysis, but the material abounds in interesting details that will doubtless have to be considered from a psycho-analytical point of view. The author has made an attempt to distinguish the chronology of the various beliefs by separating them into their original culture components. She has thus been able to point to the part played by physical environment in moulding the form assumed by a particular belief. Thus she connects the belief in an underworld with the existence of caverns and volcanoes in the neighbourhood, and she is able to show that in many cases the belief in the 'island of the dead' is directly related to historical migration. She does not of course perceive the underlying identity of these various beliefs, for this becomes obvious only with knowledge of the unconscious symbolism at work. It is interesting that the 'island of the dead' tends to be identified with a particular island from which the tribe in question had previously migrated, thus illustrating the unconscious conception of death as a return to the place of origin, i.e. the womb.
The book is well got up, and there are two useful maps accompanying the text.