of his theories, it should be sufficient for me to say that Mr. Hay cites as one whose learning is worthy of respect... M. Daniel-Rops! This gives us the measure of his critical judg-

ment.

Finally, since Mr. Hay gives such heavy attention to the matriarchal aspects of ancient Palestinian society, he should at least have avoided as hazardous an affirmation such as the following: "the cult of the mothergoddesses gave way to the cult of male gods as the matriarchate gave place to male predominance." Such a proposition is an emaxple of anti-scientific conjecture, for L. R. Farnell has long since shown evidence to support the position that the cult of male or female divinities usually has nothing to do with the surrounding matriarchate or patriarchate.

These critical remarks, somewhat dry perhaps, will at least reassure readers of Arcadie on one point, that is, when I express my disagreement with a book or an article, I do not do so without serious reasons, and in the spirit of complete intellectual honesty. But it is time to pass to more "constructive" aspects of Homophile Studies.

2. Mario Palmieri, "Leonardo the Forerunner" (Fall, 1958). This discourse on Leonardo de Vinci "talks without saying anything," a lyric and vague hymn to the artistic and scientific genius of de Vinci, which nobody doubts, and includes phrases as puerile and grandiloquent as the following: "He knew that the love of his boy (Francesco) defied men, time, and eternity," and further that the love of women brings the fruits of the flesh, that of youths spiritual fruits! On noting that the author speaks at length of the "La Gioconda" which he considers as the incarnation of the "Eternal Feminine," he seems to ignore the supposition that "La Gioconda" may perhaps be the portrait

of a boy.

3. W. Dorr Legg, "The Sodomy Rite: A Tentative Reconstruction of Certain Paleolithic Magical Practices" (Fall, 1958). After presenting some interesting ideas on paleolithic anthropology — notably relations between the hunt and sexual activitythe author leaves the track completely in depicting, "as if you were there," certain so-called magic ceremonies held in caverns by our far-off ancestors of the stone age, with ritual sodomy (!), proven clearly by history, according to him, because of accounts by explorers who had observed similar customs in New Guinea, Africa, and Australia, among the tribes "where paleolithic culture-levels are closely approximated"! It should not be thought improper to draw the attention of the Editors of Homophile Studies to the danger of such pseudoscholarly fantasies whose scientific level certainly more closely approaches the account of Axiéros on "the first invert" than it does to anthropology or history. Furthermore, I note with pleasure that, at least one reader (Winter, 1959) has qualified this article as "conjectural in the extreme." I find this critic overly moderate in his criticism.

4. W. Dorr Legg. "The Berdache and Theories of Sexual Inversion" (Spring, 1959). Here on the contrary are reliable and trustworthy texts concerning the "berdaches" or "bardaches" those invert-sorcerers of the ancient North American Indians. The application which Mr. Legg makes of these to theories of sexual inversion is clear, logical, and convincing. (It should be added, however, that the institution of "berdaches" solved a problem, that of the adaptation to a purely warrior society of the males who were illfitted for combat, physically or morally weak, and lacking in aggressiveness; our own societies solve the same

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