Harrisson, Tom. Savage Civilization. New York:  A. A. Knopf.

This is a consummate account of the socio-economic-religious complex of New Hebridean life; with an interpretation of its mythological history as viewed by the natives, and of that of modern times from the Portuguese explorer Quiros in the seventeenth century to the white trader and missionary settlements of the nineteenth. A member of the Oxford University Expedition to the New Hebrides in 1933, Mr. Harrisson spent a year among the natives on Malekula and Espiritu Santo after the expedition had ended; entering thoroughly into their life and finally winning initiation to certain manhood rites.

The survey begins with a short description of the geology, vegetation and magnificent bird life of the New Hebrides. Then, merged with the account of natural history, is set with great skill the panorama of a dynamic culture based on the slowness of stone implements; on the economic and religious utilization of pigs with curved tusks; and on individual spiritual striving towards identification with the hawk. That it is more difficult now for the ethnographer to overcome the resistance of the natives in disclosing the heart of their traditions is shown in the later phases of the history, after successive impacts of black and white cultural trends; the latter being characterized by the brutal onslaught of early traders, the effects of which were partly balanced by the missionaries. The view that population decline among Pacific islanders is due largely to psychological results dependent on breaks in the continuum of native tradition, as presented by Rivers, is here regarded as negated in the case of the New Hebrides. The present state of the islanders is clearly shown: each group preserving cultural differentiations within a general collective pattern, the lines of which derive in main terms from