Man's Poor Relations. by Earnest HootonReview by: Loren C. EiseleySocial Forces, Vol. 21, No. 4 (May, 1943), p. 492Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2571197 .

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492 SOCIAL FORCES

cally in Texas. "Pass-the-biscuits-Pappy" 0'- Daniel was got into the United States Senate before Stephen F. Austin was allowed to become the Father of Texas. Sam Houston had to fight the Battle of San Jacinto after Jim and "Ma" Ferguson had pardoned all the criminals and turned to building roads, but before the fall of the Alamo. James Stephen Hogg, the first native governor of the State, and the Nemesis of the outlaw, the first governor to establish more than a shadow of civil order in Texas, is mentioned only as "a New Deal- ing governor of great candlepower indeed" and as the father of Miss Ima Hogg, while an epic hero is made of Sam Bass, the outlaw, bank and train robber, murderer, etc., mainly because old Sam died with his boots on refusing to divulge the names of his confederates. These are only a few of the in- congruities to be found in the book.

To review a book of this type for a professional journal is a difficult task if one is to present the scientific appeal because it offers none. The author gives only a few sources in a skimpy bibli- ography but makes no apparent use of them other- wise. Evidently, the book was written for the third estate to which radio and press wiseacres ascribe sixth grade intelligence. Anyone desiring more than that would be wiser to consult the Texas supplement in the back of the grade school ge- ography, or better still, The Texas Almanac.

OTIS DURANT DUNCAN

Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College

MAN'S POOR RELATIONS. By Earnest Hooton. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1942. 391 pp. $5.00. Illustrated.

This book is the finest semi-popular presentation which Professor Hooton has achieved since the publication of his now classic and widely used volume Up From the Ape. To add to its value and significance the subject matter of the volume lies in a field which has received no sustained, readable and general treatment for some decades. As the title suggests, the work deals with the whole subject of Primatology, that is, of man's existing relatives from the great apes down through an extended range of forms to the most primitive surviving members of the primate order, such as the lemurs.

Dr. Hooton makes a wide and discriminating use of materials drawn from the scholarly publications of such distinguished investigators of the social life of the primates as Carpenter, Nissen, Zucker- man, and others-men who have immensely ad- vanced our knowledge in a difficult and exacting

field. Yet the volume is no mere anthology of ac- cessible materials. It is well integrated and illuminated throughout by Professor Hooton's characteristic wit and irony and flare for stimu- lating speculation.

Though the volume is by no means limited to the social habits of the primates, this material is rightly given the prominence it deserves. The dearth of information upon the "ethnology" of wild primates has long been a scandal in the eyes of those students of social institutions shrewd enough to realize that the life-ways of our diverse arboreal relatives might cast much light upon those innate primate trends and behavior patterns which may have played their part in the shaping of human culture. At the very least the diversity of be- havior displayed by distinct species should stand as a potent warning to those who persist in general- izing about the early forms of human institutions from anecdotal and heterogeneous sources.

Primate sociology is still in its infancy, nurtured only by a few far-seeing individuals. A vast, if somewhat difficult world to observe, lies waiting the talented observer-a domain that gives every promise of richly rewarding research. It is not to the credit of either sociology or anthropology that we must acknowledge as just Dr. Hooton's com- ment that "The somewhat amorphous discipline which goes under the name of 'Sociology' could profit enormously from the development of a con- siderable body of psychologically and biologically trained field observers who would undertake to extend the work so magnificently begun by Car- penter . . ."

Let it be reiterated that what is needed is field observation. The study of primates in cages, from the sociological standpoint yields about as much information in regard to their social be- havior as would the observation of a Kalahari Bushman in a South African jail.

If, in regard to some points, this book is inade- quate, the inadequacies are due to the present failures of science and are not to be ascribed to the author. The whole volume is a vital, significant, and richly packed work. It should stand, well thumbed, on the shelf of every student of human life and culture who has the intelligence to realize that the roots of human behavior run back toward an animal world in which we still partake in both the moments of our glory and in our humiliating limitations.

LOREN C. EISELEY

University of Kansas

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