Excerpt from Questions on the Customs, Beliefs, and Languages of Savages All persons who are brought into close contact with savages have it in their power to render a service to science by carefully investigating and recording the customs and beliefs of the people who fall under their observation, for such records add to the sum of knowledge and may perhaps be of price less value for the light they throw on the growth of human ideas and institutions. And the need to collect these records becomes more urgent every year as the circle within which they may be obtained grows steadily narrower. For every year civilisation encroaches more and more on savagery, and thus every year the documents which best illustrate the early history of man are perishing. I hope that some few at least of the persons into whose hands these Questions may fall will be stirred to a sense of the importance of the work that can still be done. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.