tions therefore finds in mythology a great fund of instructive material. A comprehensive collection like the present lends itself also to comparative study of single myths or systems of myth among difi"erent and widely remote peoples, and this use of the volumes will be facilitated by a suitable analytical index.
It is one of the merits of this collection that it is made for its own sake, with no theory to maintain or illustrate. The contributors have been given free hand to treat their subjects by such methods as may be best adapted to the nature of the sources and the peculiarities of the mythology itself, without any attempt to impose upon either the material or the writers a schematic plan.
The names of the contributors are a sufficient guarantee of the thoroughness and trustworthiness of their work, while the general editor is himself a scholar of wide attainments in this field. The volumes will be amply illustrated, not for the sake of making picture books, but for the legitimate purposes of illustration—a feature which will add much to the usefulness as well as to the attractiveness of the series. Taken all in all, therefore, the Mythology of All Races may safely be pronounced one of the most important enterprises of this age of co-operative scholarship.
Harvard University
March 20, 1916.
