I have had to omit many uncivilized societies which at first I proposed to include because I found that our information concerning them did not reach the standard of adequacy that I decided to adopt. Thus I have excluded the Australian aborigines, and also many Bantu and American Indian peoples of whose culture I made a preliminary examination. I discuss the SE. Solomon Islanders (Melanesia), but have not regarded our knowledge of the other Solomon Islanders as good enough to justify their inclusion. The same remark applies to most of the Melanesians of New Hebrides and New Guinea. My list of Polynesian and Micronesian societies also is shorter than I should like it to have been. It includes the Maori, Samoans, Tongans, Tahitians, and Gilbert Islanders; and I mention the Hawaiians; but I make no reference to the Hervey (Cook), Ellice, Marshall, Pelew, Marquesas, and Caroline Islanders. No people are more fascinating than these; but our information concerning them is scattered, scanty, and of doubtful reliability. The quality of African ethnography, too, is uneven; and though it was disappointing to have to exclude such societies as the Bari, Kavirondo, Konde, Bushongo, Bambala, and Ibo- and Edo-speaking peoples (to mention a few of the African societies which at first I proposed to include and later decided to omit), I was not impressed by the quality of the available evidence in regard to their behaviour. I also studied the Veddas, Todas, Oraons, and other famous peoples of India and Ceylon, but did not feel able to place the requisite value upon our knowledge of them. I have included twenty-eight American Indian societies; and in their case my choice has been exercised in an apparently arbitrary manner. From my original list I have deleted the names of the Ahts (Nootka), Kwakiutl, Kootenay, Cheyenne, Delaware, Seminole, Mohave, and some Shoshonean units; but there is no doubt that our knowledge of some of these tribes is equal to that of the Lillooet, Shuswap, and Thompson, all of which I have included. The reason is that among the American Indians there was an intense variety within the cultural pattern (in my sense of the word), and I was anxious to examine as many societies as I could in order to see if there was a change in the cultural pattern itself. A protracted search failed to reveal such a change; but the result of it was that when I collected my material on the American Indians I was somewhat embarrassed by its quantity. Some societies, like those of the Haida, Ojibwa, Dakota, and Crow, could not possibly be omitted, for they were of vital importance and our information concerning them is comparatively good; and from the remainder I simply chose such a number as might be considered representative.