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PREFACE xxix
that at best he was Working under unfavourable and very trying
conditions, in addition to climatic and other enervating and
dispiriting circumstances. Further, he had every expectation
of working up his own material, in which case, the lacunae would
have been ï¬Ålled up and doubtful matters resolved. His notes
tell very little about the daily life and behaviour of the PEOPLE,
but this would have been supplied had he been spared to put
his material into book form. This background of knowledge and
his reflections upon What he was told and what he himself observed
are irretrievably lost to us, and for this reason the book does
not do justice to this highly endowed, painstaking, and thoughtful
investigator. It is to Miss WedgW0od’s anthropological “know-
ledge, critical faculty, and unstinted devotion that we owe
this record of Deacon's work.
Miss Wedgwood had hoped to correct the proofs but this she
has been unable to do as at the present time she is studying the
ethnology of the island of Manam on the north coast of the
Territory of New Guinea.