My knowledge of the Dobuans is fragmentary, derived from three short visits in their district, from conversation with several Dobu natives whom I had in my service, and from frequent parallels and allusions about Dobuan customs, which are met when doing field-work among the Southern Trobrianders. There is a short, sketchy account of certain of their customs and beliefs by the Rev. W. E. Bromilow, first missionary in Dobu, which I have also consulted, in the records of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor C. G. Seligman, op. cit., pp. 170 and 171; 187 and 188 about the Koita and Motu; and B. Malinowski, The Mailu, pp. 647–652.

Comp. D. Jenness and A. Ballantyne, “The Northern d’Entrecasteaux,” Oxford, 1920, Chapter XII.

I spent about a month in these islands, and found the natives surprisingly intractable and difficult to work with ethnographically. The Amphlett “boys” are renowned as good boat-hands, but in general they are not such capable and willing workers as the Dobuans.

Already Dr. C. G. Seligman has noticed that there are people of an outstanding fine physical type among the Northern Massim, of whom the Trobrianders form the Western section, people who are “generally taller (often very notably so) than the individuals of the short-faced, broad-nosed type, in whom the bridge of the nose is very low.” Op. cit., p. 8.

I have dealt with the subject of garden work in the Trobriands and with its economic importance more fully in an article entitled “The Primitive Economics of the Trobriand Islanders” in The Economic Journal, March, 1921.

This does not mean that the general economic conclusions are wrong. The economic nature of Man is as a rule illustrated on imaginary savages for didactic purposes only, and the conclusions of the authors are in reality based on their study of the facts of developed economics. But, nevertheless, quite apart from the fact that pedagogically it is a wrong principle to make matters look more simple by introducing a falsehood, it is the Ethnographer’s duty and right to protest against the introduction from outside of false facts into his own field of study.

Compare Professor C. G. Seligman, op. cit., pp. 663–668; also the Author, article on “War and Weapons among the Trobriand Islanders,” in Man, January, 1918.