nnot but be of practical importance, the editors are
particularly anxious to have an opportunity of presenting them.

As a further indication of the method and purpose of these studies the
editors emphasize that an effort will be made not only to add to the
mass of information already extant in the writings of explorers,
traders, and missionaries, but to correlate and organize the
information already existing.

Travelers, missionaries, administrators, and scientists have
published a vast amount of valuable information regarding the
various peoples and regions in Africa. As yet, however, there has
been comparatively little correlation of this evidence. Now that
the day of the reconnaissance explorer is essentially past, and
we begin to receive accurate and detailed studies of single
tribes, it is highly desirable to have the great mass of
published material carefully sifted, so that the future student
and investigator may be able to make his efforts as productive as
possible.

From even a few such documents, it might be possible to plot
cultural areas, as has been done for North America--the areas in
question being regions of fairly uniform culture, marked off with
some sharpness from other such areas. It would then appear
whether the African areas depended on geographic conditions, on
plant or animal distributions, or on the superior inventive
genius of certain tribes or races. On the other hand, it might
appear that the whole culture area hypothesis was untenable, and
that within any given geographic area, or within any given tribe,
there would exist elements of culture which were adopted at
widely differing times and belonged to different culture levels.
Thus, a true stratification of cultures might be exposed. Yet
again, it might be found that people living in similar
environments tended to develop a like culture regardless of any
contact or close ethnic affinities.

At the present moment the task of correlating existing material in
such a way as to test the validity of current theories and
presuppositions of the anthropological sciences is quite as important
as that of adding to existing collections of information. In this way
only can the mass of information now extant be made available for the
use of students in the secondary social sciences, like sociology and
political science, w