England

Anthropologist Arrested in England

JT was reported from London in July that Captain George Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, who was private secretary and A.D.C. to the late Lord Forster, Governor-General of Australia, in 1920- 24, had been “detained” under the De fence Regulations.

Captain Pitt-Rivers was known in New Guinea, particularly in the Bismarck Archipelago, where he did field work in anthropology in 1921. He was president of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in 1923, and secretary and treasurer of the Inter national Union for the Scientific Investi gation of Population Problems in 1931.

He is now 50 years old. In 1915, he married a daughter of Lord Forster, and she obtained a divorce in 1929. She said that her husband had encouraged im moral ideas, particularly polygamy. “My husband repudiated the Church and the marriage ceremony entirely”, she said.

“He had curious ideas regarding a chaste life”.

Disciple Of Melanesia

Captain Pitt-Rivers hinted at his mar riage views in a lecture given after his return to England from Australia. “Take a hint from the Melanesian marriage system”, he said. “Our present marriage might be modified by a form of con cubinage. Who knows?” He said that in Melanesia, unmarried girls were free to receive lovers. This served as an ap prenticeship for marriage.

On June 13 a fire in a factory owned by Desikoko, Ltd., in Alexandria, Sydney, destroyed about 450 tons of copra. Desi koko, Ltd., is a subsidiary of W. R. Car penter and Co., Ltd.