is, at least Mr. Wiggam's biological bombast serves the amusing purpose of providing a foil for Mr. John Langdon-Davies. It is just such fish as the Messrs. Wiggam, Stoddard, McDougall, Grant, Chamberlain, et al., which this young Englishman serves up so nicely browned on both sides in his The New Age of Faith. In this book Mr. Langdon-Davies is occupied in the highly amusing indoor sport of scientific de-bunking. The race fiends, the heredity fiends, the Jukes, and the Edwards, the naughty Nordics, eugenics, Bryanism, progress all the current fads dressed out in the borrowed plumage of science come in for a few resounding whacks. Mr. Langdon-Davies has performed a signal service. His book is an excellent demonstration of the chastening effect of placing what we know cheek by jowl with what we would like to believe.

EYLER NEWTON SIMPSON

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Diagnosing the Rural Church: A Study in Method. By C. LUTHER FRY. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1924. Pp. xxvi+234. $1.50.

Empty Churches: The Rural-Urban Dilemma. By CHARLES JoSIAH GALPIN. New York: The Century Co., 1925. Pp. x+ 150. $1.00.

A New Day for the Country Church. By ROLVIX HARLAN, PH.D. Nashville, Tennessee: Cokesbury Press, 1925. Pp. viii+166. $1.25.

Diagnosing the Rural Church is a comparative study of Protestant churches in rural areas. It is an effort to define "trends." By "trends" the author means a formulation for social life which would compare with the "laws" of the physical phenomena. The raw material was collected by the Interchurch World Movement in 1920, and by Gill and Pinchot in The Country Church, a study of Windsor County, Vermont. The units of comparison are communal rather than administrative. This has made the task more difficult, because the census is on the basis of formal units. As a basis for determining the interest which people have in the church, the author uses as an index unit contributions of time rather than money. The measurement of "intangible spiritual factors" is a problem in methodology, which the author seeks to solve in the customary way of dealing with subjective phenomena, namely, finding objective indices with which they are correlated. That is the way we measure heat, cold, and time.

The methods are obviously excellent. The question is whether, however, in all this expenditure of statistics, the author has done more than elaborate facts that would be perfectly obvious to the intelligent observer.

Galpin's Empty Churches is not, as the author frankly says, a report of facts, but only an interpretation of them. In a very real sense, however, this book does present the essential facts in the intimate stories which it records of family life. The problem of the rural churches is the problem of distribution. Because of improper distribution thousands of country children are uncared for religiously. Rural churches should be distributed on the basis of need rather than competition, and the rural ministry should be trained in rural theological seminaries located near the great colleges of agriculture.

Rolvix Harlan writes as an evangelist of the country-life movement, and as one who has abounding hope in the rural church. His book is a manual setting forth the objectives, the programs, and the administrative devices for carrying on effective church work in the rural community. S. C. KINCHELOE

CHICAGO Y.M.C.A. COLLEGE

The Mythology of All Races. Vol. VII. Armenian, by MARDIROS H. ANANIKIAN; African, by ALICE WERNER. Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1925. Pp. viii+448. $8.00.

This is the latest contribution to that excellent series of volumes which aims to collect the world's mythology. Professor Ananikian has written a brief account of the mythology of his own people. The author's task has been largely to determine the religious customs and beliefs of the early Armenians from an examination of the early chronicles. The material from these sources is supplemented only to a slight extent by material drawn from modern Armenian folk-lore. There are very few folk-tales stories told merely for entertainment. The author devotes his attention to describing and identifying the deities and supernatural personages about whom the myths were told. He finds the Armenian mythology a conglomerate of native (North Indo-European) elements with many Persian contributions, together with a slight Semitic admixture. On the whole the mythology is not very different from that of our own tradition. Here are myths and customs clustering about fire and water, dragons and dragon-slaying heroes, nymphs, demons, and dwarfs.

The myths in Professor Werner's collection, on the other hand, were taken down from the mouths of the people who told them. As the volume

is written not by an ethnologist but by a student of African languages, it is perhaps not remarkable that the author is not much concerned with distribution or origins. She has simply brought the tales together and grouped them according to their subject matter: "Nature Myths," "Tales of Demons and Ogres," "Totemism and Animal Stories," and so forth. There is no attempt at regional treatment. In this respect, if in no other, the volume is of less use than Dixon's treatment of Oceanic mythology. One tale is connected with the preceding simply by the fact that the author sees a resemblance or a contrast. A tale from one part of Africa is followed by a tale from quite another part. The author does no more than occasionally venture a suggestion as to possible transmission of an element from one group to another. There is no reference, for example, to the work done by Boas and by Espinosa on the problem of the origin and distribution of the "Tar Baby" and other Negro stories.

Professor Werner's contribution is an anthology, a portfolio, a source book. Work on the problem as to how the tales came to be as they are remains to be done.

ROBERT REDFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

Elementary Statistical Methods. By WILLIAM G. SUTCLIFFE. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1925. Pp. xvii+338. $3.00. Statistical Method. By HARRY JEROME. New York: Harper & Bros., 1924. Pp. xxiv+395.

Principles and Methods of Statistics. By ROBERT EMMET CHADDOCK. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1925. Pp. xvi+471. $3.75.

The traditional way of beginning a textbook in statistics is to define the subject in a formal way and then proceed to describe the routine for collecting statistical data. Sutcliffe conforms to tradition; Chaddock does not. On the contrary, his introductory chapter deals with the misuses of statistical data, and, incidentally, is one of the best chapters in the volume. Jerome makes use of his introductory chapter to discuss the sampling process, a topic with which it seems that any text in statistics might begin.

The chief defect found in textbooks on statistics, in the opinion of the reviewer, lies in the overemphasis placed upon the technique of statistical analysis, with the resulting failure to give the appropriate atten

tion to the logical implications of statistical practices. The word "should" is overworked, and the question "why?" is too often left unanswered. Of the three books, Chaddock's is, in this respect, the best, although on the whole Sutcliffe's volume is the most readable of the three.

Jerome's book first appeared in mimeographed form, and has not been carefully edited. Much the same thing may be said of Chaddock's text. Because of its wealth of illustrative data, its theoretical approach, its completeness in detail, and its skepticism, it is the most satisfactory textbook now available for use in introductory courses in statistics where the aim is not to train statistical technicians, but to teach the student to understand and appreciate statistical methods wherever he finds them used in the social sciences.

CHICAGO

ERNEST R. MOWRER

The Child, the Clinic and the Court. A group of papers by JANE ADDAMS, and others. New York: New Republic, Inc., 1925. Pp. 344. $1.00.

This little book is a collection of twenty-seven papers delivered at a meeting in Chicago in January, 1925, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the first juvenile court and the fifteenth anniversary of the first psychopathic institute. It is divided into three parts. The first is "The Personality of the Child"; the second is "The Clinic," and includes a symposium on fundamental behavior; and the third is "The Court."

The contributions are all by experts in their fields, including Healy, Child, Herrick, Boas, Lindsey, Mack, and others. The presentation, however, is simple and popular in style. The necessity for sympathy and for an understanding of the psychology of delinquency is stressed as essential for adequate treatment. On the theoretical side the environment is emphasized even by the biologists, or rather especially by them, as an important factor in delinquency. "Perverted sense of values," "lack of incentives," "poorly handled superior intellectual endowment," "misdirected or unsatisfied fundamental instinctive desires" (including Thomas' four wishes), slum conditions, poor physical and social sanitation are among the factors given by social workers as causing delinquency. There is an "acceptance of the minimized rôle which mental defect plays in the genesis of misconduct." Science is appealed to to furnish a method of

handling delinquency, a point of view, data, detailed analyses of environment, and incentives, goals, and a philosophy for children.

The book is a valuable, though popular, history and theoretical description of two very vital and important modern social inventions, the juvenile court and the mental hygiene clinic.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

JESSIE S. RAVITCH

An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology, with a Preliminary Account of the Excavations at Pecos. By ALFRED VINCENT KIDDER. New Haven: Published for the Department of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, by the Yale University Press, 1924. Pp. 151. $4.00.

Nowhere in America has the stratigraphic method been used so effectively as in the Southwest to determine the history of preliterate cultures. The results of the archaeologist are there supplemented by the work of the ethnologist among the modern Pueblo Indians. Dr. Kidder's book is a thorough and reliable summary of archaeological contributions to the problems. The tentative formulation of culture sequences growing out of a stratigraphic and comparative study of the many sites in the region is here carried from the "Basket Makers" to the modern Pueblos, to whose culture a chapter is devoted.

The author has for six years been engaged in the scientific excavation of the large Pecos ruins. The report upon this work affords a concrete illustration of modern archaeological methods. Most of the book is devoted to a description and suggested correlation of known southwestern sites. These are grouped according to the river drainage within which each cluster of ruins lies; each such cluster turns out to form an "area of specialization," i.e., a culture area.

With regard to controversial questions it may be stated that the author believes that while pottery, stone masonry, and agriculture were introduced into the region from Mexico, the characteristic uses and styles of these and other traits are indigenous to the region; and that the concentration of the population in the large communities can be explained without recourse to the theory of marked climatic changes. The book is well illustrated and has a complete bibliography. ROBERT REDFIELD

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO