THE BEGINNINGS OF ART. By Ernst Grosse, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Freiburg. A new volume in the Anthropological Series, edited by Professor Frederick Starr. Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. $1.75.
This is an inquiry into the laws which control the life and development of art, and into the relations existing between it and certain forms of civilization. The origin of an artistic activity should be sought among the most primitive peoples, like the native Australians, the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, the Botocudos of South America, and the Eskimos; and with these alone the author studies his subject. Their arts are regarded as a social phenomenon and a social function, and are classified as arts of rest and arts of motion. The arts of rest comprise decoration, first of the body by scarification, painting, tattooing, and dress; and then of implements—painting and sculpture; while the arts of motion are the dance (a living sculpture), poetry or song, with rhythm, and music.
WOMAN’S SHARE IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE. By Otis Tufton Mason, A. M., Curator of the Department of Ethnology in the United States National Museum. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.
“A most interesting résumé of the revelations which science has made concerning the habits of human beings in primitive times, and especially as to the place, the duties, and the customs of women.”—Philadelphia Inquirer.
THE PYGMIES. By A. de Quatrefages, late Professor of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.
“Probably no one was better equipped to illustrate the general subject than Quatrefages. While constantly occupied upon the anatomical and osseous phases of his subject, he was none the less well acquainted with what literature and history had to say concerning the pygmies.... This book ought to be in every divinity school in which man as well as God is studied, and from which missionaries go out to convert the human being of reality and not the man of rhetoric and text-books.”—Boston Literary World.
THE BEGINNINGS OF WRITING. By W. J. Hoffman, M. D. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.
This interesting book gives a most attractive account of the rude methods employed by primitive man for recording his deeds. The earliest writing consists of pictographs which were traced on stone, wood, bone, skins, and various paperlike substances. Dr. Hoffman shows how the several classes of symbols used in these records are to be interpreted, and traces the growth of conventional signs up to syllabaries and alphabets—the two classes of signs employed by modern peoples.
IN PREPARATION.
THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDERS. By Dr. Schmeltz.