A Valuable Anthropological
p. 51 · Read in the full issue
Record
MOST of the more valuable anthropo logical and ethnographical records in the world have been compiled by painstaking men, who during the past 200 years, have gone out among primitive races as Christian missionaries. Nowa days there is not much work of that kind left to be done; but there still are primi tive untouched races in New Guinea and. in that connection, a most valuable record has been compiled by Rev. John Frederick Mager, a missionary attached to the Lutheran Mission, Madang, T.N.G. Mr.
Mager calls his brochure “Education and Social Change in a New Guinea Society”: and in it he places on record notes and observations made during many years’
work in the interior of the mainland of New Guinea.
Mr. Mager, like all missionaries of vision, is deeply concerned about the effect of the introduction of European civilisation to the primitive races of New Guinea, and he examines the problem from all angles. Other anthropologists may not agree with his conclusions, but everyone will feel grateful to him for the mass of material which he has assembled and co-ordinated. This primitive country is being so rapidly penetrated by European influences that, within a few short years, native customs will have been altered and primitive social structures profoundly changed.
Mr. A. H. Dennc, of the N.Z. Education Department, recently carried out the annual inspection of Fiji schools.