A journey through Aboriginal Australia
25.07.1899. From E. B. T. (in Oxford) to B. S. More about Frazer’s change of view as a result of B. S.’s work.
Letters from (Sir) Edward Burnett Tylor
UNIVERSITY MUSEUM
OXFORD
My dear Spencer
I am not really writing from Oxford, but from Southwold a quiet little East Coast seaside place. One of my occupations has been to read the last journal of the Anthropological Institute, & I congratulate you as I did when we sat together last, at Frazer’s calmly throwing over his former theory of totemism
which I had taken so much pains to knock the bottom out of, in order to absorb your discoveries. I think your contribution to the totem-theory is so good that it will lead to the yet unsettled synthesis of the whole set of customs. I always held exogamy to be independent of totem, and indeed years ago made an effort in the J.A.I. to interpret it as a mere alliance of clans. It will be very interesting to have the churingas in the Pitt-Rivers and I shall of course tell you if any turn up from other sources. All I have seen are casts of so-called ones sent me by Andrew Lang from a place called I think Dumbuick in Scotland! I have not heard of Balfour since he sailed for S. Africa to recover from the effects of typhoid & jaundice. I much hope
he may get back restored, but poor man, he has had a bad time. I hope for more ‘Tasmanian’ implements from W. Australia, especially now that things like plateau flints are turning up in S. Africa. Evidently pre-palaeolithic man has lasted most instructively in savagery of the Southern Ocean. My kindest regards to Howitt & regret about the Tales, but we did all we could. I hope anthropology will soon hear of him again, Fison likewise. Have you got H Ling Roth’s new edition of Tasmanians?
Yours truly
E B Tylor
Rights: Pitt Rivers Museum
