SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE Further East, on the South coast, there lives theindustrious, this cannot be done as rigorously, but every student will do a-faring population of the Mailu, who link the East End oi his best to bring home to the reader all the conditions in which trading expeditio inally, the natives of the islands graphy, where a candid account of such data is perhaps even and archipelagoes, scattered around the East End, are in constant trading relations with one another. We possess in bore necessary, it has unfortunately in the past not always been supplied with sufficient generosity, and many writers do Professor Seligman's book an excellent description of the not ply the full searchlight of methodic sincerity, as they move subject, especially of the nearer trades routes between the among their facts but produce them before us out of complete various islands inhabited by the Southern Massim t There abscurit exists, however, another, a very extensive and highly complex trading system, embracing with its ramifications, not only the I sientific hall-mark on them, in which wholesale generalisations islands near the East End, but also the Louisiades, Woodlark are laid down before us, and we are not informed at all by what Island, the Trobriand Archipelago, and the d'Entrecasteaux actual experiences the writers have reached their conclusion. oup: it penetrates into the mainland of New Guinea, and No special chapter or paragraph is devoted to describing to us xerts an indirect influence over several outlying districts, such as Rossel Island, and some parts of the Northern and the conditions under which observations were made and infor Southern coast of New Guinea. This tradin mation collected. I consider that only such ethnograph tem, the Kula, sources are of unquestionable scientific value, in which we can is the subiect I am setting out to describe m this volume, and clearly draw the line between, on the one hand, the results of it will be seen that it is an economic phenomenon of considera- direct observation and of native statements and interpretation ffe of those natives who live within its circuit, and its impor- common sense and psycholgical insight. Indeed, some such ambitions, desires and vanities are very much bound up with I this chapter)ought to be forthcoming, so that at a glance the the Kula II rsonal acquaintance with the facts which he describes, and Before proceeding to the account of the Kula, it will be well n idea under what conditions information had been to give a description of the methods used in the collecting of the ethnographic material. The results of scientific research Again, in historical science, no one could expect to be any branch of learning ought to be presented in a manner seriously treated if he made any mystery of his sources and absolutely candid and above board. No one would dream poke of the past as if he knew it by divination. In Ethno- of making an experimental contribution to physical or chemical I the same time, while his sources are no doubt easily accessible account of all the arrange- but also supremely elusive and complex they are not ments of the experiments; an exact description of the apparatus used: of the manner in which the observations were conducted bodied in fixed, material documents, but in the behaviour of their number; of the length of time devoted to them, and a nd in the memory of ting men.In Ethnography, the of the degree of approximation with which each measurement tance is often enormous between the brute material yas made. In less exact sciences, as in biology or geology, ailu, "by B. Malinowski of S. Australia, I915: Chapter iv, 4, pP. 612 to 629. ers and s t Op. cit. Chapter xl wes can visualise with pertect precision the conditions under which the work