a book whose speciality is anthropology. The accidents of my
life, it may be said without undue presumption, my long dealings
with Arabs and other Mahommedans, and my familiarity not only
with their idiom but with their turn of thought, and with that
racial individuality which baffles description, have given me
certain advantages over the average student, however deeply he
may have studied. These volumes, moreover, afford me a long
sought opportunity of noticing practices and customs which
interest all mankind and which "Society" will not hear mentioned.
Grate, the historian, and Thackeray, the novelist, both lamented
that the begueulerie of their countrymen condemned them to keep
silence where publicity was required; and that they could not
even claim the partial licence of a Fielding and a Smollett.
Hence a score of years ago I lent my best help to the late Dr.
James Hunt in founding the Anthropological Society, whose
presidential chair I first occupied (pp. 2-4 Anthropologia;
London, Balliere, vol. i., No. I, 1873). My motive was to supply
travellers with an organ which would rescue their observations
from the outer darkness of manuscript, and print their curious
information on social and sexual matters out of place in the
popular book intended for the Nipptisch and indeed better kept
from public view. But, hardly had we begun when "Respectability,"
that whited sepulchre full of all uncleanness, rose up against
us. "Propriety" cried us down with her brazen blatant voice, and
the weak kneed brethren fell away. Yet the organ was much wanted
and is wanted still. All now known barbarous tribes in Inner
Africa, America and Australia, whose instincts have not been
overlaid by reason, have a ceremony which they call "making men."
As soon as the boy shows proofs of puberty, he and his coevals
are taken in hand by the mediciner and the Fetisheer; and, under