west, and the Americas on the east. From the latter region it is quite possible that there may have been borrowing of ideas. In both Peru and Middle America ceremonial structures were erected on pyramids, which were actually nothing more than mounds faced with stone. I am unable at the present writing to find out whether there was any form of Inca temple or shrine that bore some resemblance to the Polynesian oracle-house. In Middle America, however, the form of the Maya temples that surmounted the pyramids in Yucatan is certainly suggestive. The material employed in building these structures was, of course, different, being stone and plaster; but there is a suggestion of similarity in the form of the building, which was small and rectangular at the base with a high steep roof surmounted by a superstructure of masonry intended to give the appearance of greater height. In the small vaulted chamber or chambers beneath these tall roofs the Maya priests performed their rites (13, pp. 69, ff.).

As to Micronesia and Melanesia; tall ceremonial structures of several kinds occur in these regions; and to some of these the Marquesan, Hawaiian, and Fijian structures described are doubtless related. The study of the form, use, and distribution of such structures constitutes an excellent subject for research, but one that is beyond the scope of this paper. It may be said, however, that there is little reason to suppose that this culture-trait would have been borrowed from these regions by Polynesians. Continuous distribution from Polynesia through Micronesia, or Melanesia, or both, would almost certainly indicate diffusion from some point further west in Malaysia or Asia.

Turning finally, then, to those regions from which Polynesian migrators are generally believed to have set out on their long voyages hitherward, it is to be noted that in South India, Java. South-east Asia, in fact throughout the region dominated by Buddhist and Braham influence up to and after A.D. 1000, tower-like structures, rectangular in cross section, were typical of the temple architecture. The Dravidian form of architecture, with its prominent use of massive towers, dominates this whole region. The towers often stand on platforms or artificial elevations. The magnificent temple of Boro-Budur surmounts not an artificial mound, but a natural hill which is encased in stone-faced terraces, as both natural and artificial contours were treated

in Polynesia-and also in Middle America. There is one part of the region of Dravidian architectural influence where the discovery of a prototype of the Polynesian prophet's house would not be at all surprising, namely in what was the kingdom of Champa, east of Cambodia. The modern inhabitants of this region, the Chams, represent a type whose racial traits correspond to those of the Caucasoid element in Polynesia. The Chams living to-day in this region retain a tapu system that resembles closely in some details that of ancient Polynesia; even the word signifying ceremonial restriction, which in Cham is tabun, is seen to correspond with the Polynesian tapu or tabu. There are numerous other survivals of the old Cham religion which, by a student of Polynesian worship, might be termed Polynesian. Mr. H. D. Skinner has recently (12, p. 242) demonstrated the fact that certain adze-forms typical of Polynesia find their counterpart in the ancient "shouldered celts" of this region of South-east Asia, whence there appears to have been a dispersion of peoples into Indonesia and perhaps thence to Polynesia (6, pp. 276, ff.). This would, therefore, appear to be a favourable locality in which to search for the prototype of the oracle-house of the Polynesian cult. Whether the ancient Cham temple-form described in the following quotation was actually the prototype of the oraclehouse, cannot be asserted; but that the two are generically related through common derivation from South Indian architectural forms appears to me highly probable. The Cham temples are described as follows (4, p. 341) :—

"Constructed nearly all on well-chosen sites, on top of a hill, facing the east and built of solid brick, they consist of a square tower or a series of square towers built very closely together. Each tower contains a sanctuary in the form of a pyramidal vault, furnished with a door opening out of a porch on one face, while the three other faces are decorated with false doors. All this forms a sort of ground floor that is surmounted by an upper storey set further back, which is an exact reproduction on a smaller scale of the first, and which continues into a third and fourth stage of the same type, but growing smaller and smaller."

In the modern Cham worship the priests still officiate in these ancient towers (4, p. 343), as did the prophets of the local patron deities in the Polynesian oracle-houses. In the stagings or storeys in the Hawaiian lananu'u, upon

which the priest ascended in certain rites, it may even be that we have a survival of the superimposed chambers in the Cham towers.

Discretion dictates a tentative statement of opinion on this matter of the probable derivation of the Polynesian oracle-house. The main point that I would make in concluding is that we have in the Polynesian oracle-house, made of perishable wood, thatch, and sennit, and perhaps also in the miniature shrines, ethnic traits capable of being used by archaeologists for comparison with remains of ancient temple forms and shrines built and preserved in more durable materials in other regions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1.-BANKS, JOSEPH, Journal, etc., London, 1896.

2.—BEST, ELSDON, Maori Religion and Mythology, Dominion Museum Bulletin, No. 10, Section 1, Wellington, 1924.

3.-BRIGHAM, WILLIAM T., Director's Report, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Occasional Papers, Vol. 1, No. 1, Honolulu, 1898. 4.-CABATON, ANTOINE, Chams," in Hasting's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 3, pp. 340-50.

5.-COOK JAMES, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean.

in the years

1776-1780 [3rd voyage], Vol. 2, London, 1784. 6.-DIXON, R. B., The Racial History of Man, New York, 1923. 7.-GILL, W. W., Life in the Southern Isles, London, 1876. 8.-HANDY, E. S. CRAIG HILL, The Native Culture in the Marquesas, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, No. 9, Honolulu, 1923. 9. MALO, DAVID, Hawaiian Antiquities, Honolulu, 1903. 10.-MOEREN HOUT, J. A., Voyages aux Iles du Grand Ocean, Paris, 1837.

11.-PORTER, DAVID, A Voyage to the South Seas, London, 1823. 12.-SKINNER, H. D., The Origin and Relationships of Maori Material Culture and Decorative Arts, Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 33, pp. 229-243.

13. SPINDEN, H. J., Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, American Museum of Natural History, Handbook Series, No. 3, New York, 1917.

14.-TYERMAN, D., and BENNETT, G., Journal of the Voyages and Travels, etc., Boston and New York, 1832.

15.-WILLIAMS, THOMAS, Fiji and the Fijians, Vol. 1, London, 1858.

REVIEW.

C. E. FOX, LITT. D., "The Threshold of the Pacific."

An Account of the Social Organization, Magic, and Religion of the People of San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands, by C. E. Fox, LITT. D., with a Preface by G. Elliot Smith, F.R.S., with 14 plates, 39 illustrations in the text, and a map, 1924.

New Zealanders may feel legitimate pride in the work being done in ethnology by two of their countrymen overseas-Jenness in Canada and Fox in the Solomon Islands. Jenness graduated at Victoria College and afterwards took the diploma in anthropology at Oxford. Fox graduated at Auckland and went at once into the Melanesian Mission. Though never in residence at Cambridge, he came into ethnology through the influence of Rivers, and has been so constantly in touch that he may fairly be described as one of the Cambridge school.

The present work deals with the social organisation of the islanders among whom Fox has spent a great part of his life. The people at both ends of San Cristoval and on the outlying islands and even on the coast of the main mass of the island, are organised into a number of totemistic clans-bird-clans to the west, aquatic clans to the east, and both along the coast of the central part. But the people of the large central portion of the island are a dual people, without totemism; and traces of this dual organization are found even in the districts where the totemistic clans now exist; so that the former seems to be the older. In such interesting and such complex conditions as these Dr. Fox has carried on his work-work which would be of high scientific value in any case, but which is rendered inestimably valuable by the fact that the native culture has already been profoundly affected by European contact, and is probably destined within a generation to become extinct.

Rivers thought very highly of the work, "and during the latter years of his life," says Elliot Smith in the preface, “whenever he happened to suffer from ill-health, his chief anxiety was the risk that the publication of Fox's book might be imperilled if the responsibility were his alone. In 1918 Rivers had asked me to undertake the duty of his literary executor, mainly for the purpose of getting the results of Fox's work published, if perchance anything should happen to him; and six months before his death he impressed this upon me as my first duty to him. The issue of this book is the fulfilment of this pious obligation," (p. vi.).

The book is part of a thesis submitted for the Doctorate of Literature of the University of New Zealand, and the University may well feel satisfied if this fairly represents the standard required. Dr. Fox proposes to publish the remaining portions in the Journal of the Polynesian Society. It is greatly to be hoped that he will

give us an account of the material culture of San Cristoval, a task for which he is admirably fitted; but in the meanwhile ethnologists must thank him for work on the social side, the only peer of which in the Pacific is that of Mr. Best among the Maori.

H.D.S.

The work is certainly most interesting and exhaustive; and the fact that Dr. W. H. R. Rivers considered it "one of the most important, if not the most important, piece of field work that has ever been done in social anthropology," (p. vi.) shews at any rate in what estimation it was held by that eminent anthropologist. Without doubt it is thorough, and in such matters as relationships, complicated by adoptions, it shews the existence of a social complexity whose unravelling would seem an impossibility; it would be an impossibility to the average student.

The island of San Cristoval, part of which is here so exhaustively studied, is not of great extent, 76 miles long and 23 broad. It would have been more satisfying had details of size been given in the book, and details, even if only approximate, of population. Arosi, the northwestern end, the end most referred to, is said to contain 30 villages, but the number of persons in a village is not stated; an approximate number is better than none, for when a great variety of forms in a custom is observed among a people comparatively small in number, these varieties have not the same significance that they would have were they observed by a greater number. For instance, twenty-one methods of burial are enumerated, "using the word burial in a wide sense for all ways of disposing of the body of a dead person," (p. 217), and of these methods some have several further modifications; and when a man dies he may apparently choose any of these methods that he prefers. No doubt some find more favour than others, but even then it is difficult to accept the statement quoted from Dr. River's Psychology and Politics:-" the resemblance between the mortuary customs of ancient Egypt and modern San Cristoval, so close and extending to so many points of detail, makes it incredible that they should have arisen independently in these two regions. We can be confident that mariners imbued with the culture of Egypt, if they were not themselves Egyptians, reached the Solomon Islands in their search for wealth," (p. v.). It is surely less credible that the customs have remained unchanged in San Cristoval though they changed in Egypt-have remained unchanged for hundreds of years (not to say a thousand or two), especially when it is remembered that San Cristoval is regarded as the threshold of the Pacific; and that means that wave after wave of migration has passed over it. Have these waves passed and left the first Egyptian settlers unaffected? Not so; for the Arosi people themselves have a legend of the first people who came to San Cristoval from Mwara (Malaita), "but originally from a country far to the north-west, whose name is known and handed down," (p. 9). Dr. Fox never heard the name, though he was always told that others could tell him, so it apparently is one of those cryptic names that are handed down though they are forgotten. But if the people came from Malaita, then the Malaita mortuary customs should also resemble those of ancient Egypt; if they do