The Swiss Folk-Lore Society.
In May last, the new Swiss Folk-Lore Society was formally constituted; and already the first number of its journal, the Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, has been issued, containing its manifesto and programme. The German term Volkskunde comprises somewhat more than our Folklore. Accordingly, not merely traditions, in the wide sense in which we use the word, are included within the programme of the new Society, but also the material arts, dwellings, tools, dress, food, and fabrics of the people; and to these the Society proposes to add physical observations. It will thus be seen to cover an area corresponding very nearly to that of the Ethnographical Survey of this country. And the varied contents of the Archiv correspond to this wide purview. Judging from the list of members (who have reached a total number, during the first six months of the Society's existence, of no fewer than 298), it has excited a wide and general interest, at least throughout the French and German-speaking cantons. It cannot but be gratifying to the Folk-Lore Society to find herself thus becoming "the august mother of" a numerous progeny of societies similar in aim and method. We bid the new Society very heartily Godspeed.
The head-quarters of the Society are at Zurich. The President is Dr. E. Hoffmann-Krayer, who edits the Archiv. The subscription to the Archiv, which is to appear quarterly, is eight francs, beside the cost of postage.
