Abstract
THIS catalogue of the anthropological section of the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg is a model of its kind, and from the exhaustive manner in which it is treated the publishers are quite justified in calling the publication as they do in their prospectus a “Handbook of Ethnography and Ethnology of the South Sea Tribes.” The Godeffroy collection is probably unique and unrivalled as representing the area to which it is confined, and is another example of what private munificence can accomplish for scientific ends; and though the great merchant house may no longer have their collectors scattered throughout the South Seas, the town of Hamburg now possesses by their exertions the anthropological material which this somewhat bulky volume of 687 pages with 46 plates is found not too large to enumerate. However, this catalogue is not merely an enumeration, but contains much valuable geographical information, and some most useful bibliographical notes, which, in the present absence of any anthropological record compiled in the method and way of our zoological work, is, if not perfect, much to be commended, and not too critically received. The arrangement is geographical, and therefore ethnological in its true sense, as followed in most large museums, the Pitt-Rivers collection being of course a brilliant exception, which is rather designed to exhibit evolution in culture.
Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg. Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Südsee-Völker.
Von J. D. E. Schmeltz Dr. med. R. Krause. (Hamburg: L. Friederichsen and Co. 1881.)
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D., W. Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Südsee-Völker . Nature 23, 168 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/023168a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023168a0