Choose another writer in this calendar: by birthday from the
calendar. ||Sir James (George) Frazer (1854-1941)| British
anthropologist, historian of religion and classical scholar,
whose best-known work The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative
Religion traced the evolution of human behavior, ancient and
primitive myth, magic, religion, ritual, and taboo. The book
appeared first in two volumes in 1890 and finally in 12 volumes
in 1911-15. It was named after the golden bough in the sacred
grove at Nemi, near Rome. Frazer did much to popularize
anthropology, and although his insights were widely influential
in his time, his conclusions are mostly discredited now. "It is
said, too, that sailors, beating up against the wind in the Gulf
of Finland, sometimes see a strange sail heave in sight astern
and overhaul them hand over hand. On she comes with a cloud of
canvas – all her studding-sails out – right in the teeth of the
wind, forging her way through the foaming billows, dashing back
the spray in sheets from her