Review

Les Contes Moralisés De Nicole Bozon. Publiés pour la premiére fois par Lucy Toulmin Smith et Paul Meyer. (Société des Anciens Textes Français.) Paris, 1889, 8vo., pp. lxxiv, 333. By Joseph Jacobs.     

Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi in Correspondence

Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi corresponded with each other for the best part of thirty years. They had shared interests that included science, social science, economics, epistemology, history of ideas and political philosophy. Studying their correspondence and related writings, this article shows that Hayek and Polanyi were committed Liberals but with different understandings of liberty, the forces that endanger liberty, and the policies required to rescue it.     

The Problem of Diffusion: Rejoinders

MYTH AND RELIGION OF THE NORTH, The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. By E. O. G. TURVILLE-PETRE. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964. Pp. 340.50s. net. Reviewed by E. O. James.

HERBERT JENNINGS ROSE, 1883–1961. By W. L. LORIMER, Oxford University Press. 3s. net. Reviewed by E. O. James.

THE CULT OF THE CAT. By PATRICIA DALE-GREEN. London, William Heinemann. Pp. 189; 39 plates. Price 30s. Reviewed by Theo Brown.

DIE SAGEN DER MONATHLICHEN UNTERREDUNGEN OTTO VON GRABENS ZUM STEIN. Edited by W. E. PEUCKERT. Corpus Fabulorum I. Berlin, W. de Gruyter &; Co., 1961. Pp. xix, 327. Reviewed by E. Ettlinger.

GÖTTER UND GÖTTERTIERE DER MAYA. By WOLFGANG CORDAN. Bern, Francke Verlag, 1963. Pp. 75; 50 text figs. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

THE REGIONAL VOCABULARY OF TEXAS. By E. Bagby Atwood. University of Texas Press, 1962. Pp. 273, xiii. $5.75. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

LAPP LIFE AND CUSTOMS. By ØRNULF VORREN and ERNST MANKER, (translated by Kathleen McFarlane). London, 1962. Pp. 183.38s. Reviewed by W. R. Mead.

FOLK TALES FROM RAJASTHAN. Retold by L. N. BIRLA. Illustrated by PHANI BHUSHAN. London, Asia Publishing House, 1964. Pp. 60. 20s. Reviewed by L. P. Elwell-Sutton.

DRAMA AND IMAGERY IN ENGLISH MEDIEVAL CHURCHES. By M. D. ANDERSON. C.U.P., 1963. Pp. 248. 45s. Reviewed by Alex Helm.

BRETON FOLK DANCES. By JEAN-MICHAEL GUILCHER. Paris, School of Higher Studies, Sorbonne. Reviewed by Douglas Kennedy.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE SIOUX NATION. By ROBERT M. UTLEY. Yale University Press, 1961. Pp. 314; 24 plates. 56s. net. Reviewed by C. A. Burland.

STUDIES IN JAPANESE FOLKLORE. By RICHARD M. DORSON. Indiana University Press, 1963. Pp. 247. Reviewed by W. H. Hudspeth.

THE MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF THE COAST OF TANGANYIKA. By G. S. P. FREEMAN-GRENVILLE. Oxford University Press. Pp. 238; maps, plates. 50s. Reviewed by W. H. Whiteley.

DIE VOLKSERZÄHLUNG. By LEOPOLD SCHMIDT. Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1963. Pp. 448; 4 maps. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

DEUTSCHES JAHRBUCH FÜR VOLKSKUNDE. Vol. ix. Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1963. Pp. 468; Pls. 8, xvi; 9 text figs. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

BRÜDER GRIMM GEDENKEN 1963. Gedenkschrift zur hundertsten Wiederkehr des Todestages von Jacob Grimm. Marburg, N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1963. Pp. ix, 610; 16 plates. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. Compiled and edited by IRWIN SILBER, Piano and Guitar Accompaniment by Garry Silverman. Columbia University Press, 1960; Oxford University Press, 1961. Reviewed by K. M. Briggs.     

Reviews

Studies in Folk-Song-and Popular Poetry. By Alfred M. Williams, with a Prefatory Note by Edward Clodd. 8vo; pp. vi., 329. Elliot Stock, 1895.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Translated by C. H. S. Davies. Putnam Sons, New York. By Joseph Jacobs.

Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. First Series, IVth to XIIth Dynasty Edited Flinders Petrie, Hon. D.C.L. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. London, Methuen &; Co. 1895.

Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World collected from oral tradition in South-West Munster by Jeremiah Curtin. David Nutt, 1895.     

An improved OSL chronology for the Still Bay layers at Blombos Cave,South Africa: further tests of single-grain dating procedures and a re-evaluation of the timing of the Still Bay industry across southern Africa

This paper presents a series of new single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages for the Still Bay at Blombos Cave, South Africa, and compares them to previously published OSL, thermoluminescence (TL) and electron-spin resonance (ESR) ages for this site. Details are provided about the measurement and analytical procedures, including a discussion of the characteristics of the OSL signals of individual quartz grains. This forms the basis for further investigations into the sensitivity of the equivalent dose (D_e) estimates to a range of different analytical approaches, including changes in the size of the test dose, the choice of signal integration interval, the subtraction of an appropriate background, and isolation of the most light-sensitive (‘fast’) component of quartz OSL. We also report the results of an inter-operator test of D_e determination using seven new samples from Blombos Cave, and demonstrate the reproducibility of results obtained for two samples that had been dated previously at another laboratory and were measured and analysed again in this study. Together, these tests validate the robustness of the Blombos Cave single-grain OSL age estimates to a variety of alternative OSL dating procedures. We have incorporated, for the first time, these ages for Blombos Cave into a data set of all single-grain OSL ages for Still Bay and Howieson's Poort sites across southern Africa, and have used a statistical model to re-evaluate the timing and duration of the Still Bay industry. We calculate the most plausible start and end dates of the Still Bay as 72.2 ka and 71.3 ka, respectively – amounting to a duration of 0.9 ka – and estimate (with conventional 95% confidence) that this industry began no earlier than 75.5 ka, ended no later than 67.8 ka and lasted no longer than 6.6 ka.     

The Discovery of Spectral Opponency in Visual Systems and its Impact on Understanding the Neurobiology of Color Vision

The two principal theories of color vision that emerged in the nineteenth century offered alternative ideas about the nature of the biological mechanisms that underlie the percepts of color. One, the Young-Helmholtz theory, proposed that the visual system contained three component mechanisms whose individual activations were linked to the perception of three principal hues; the other, the Hering theory, assumed there were three underlying mechanisms, each comprising a linked opponency that supported contrasting and mutually exclusive color percepts. These competing conceptions remained effectively untested until the middle of the twentieth century when single-unit electrophysiology emerged as a tool allowing a direct examination of links between spectral stimulation of the eye and responses of individual cells in visual systems. This approach revealed that the visual systems of animals known to have color vision contain cells that respond in a spectrally-opponent manner, firing to some wavelengths of stimulation and inhibiting to others. The discovery of spectral opponency, and the research it stimulated, changed irrevocably our understanding of the biology of color vision.