Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/322

 3IO Reviews.

Babylonians and Assyrians. Life and Customs. By the Rev. A. H. Sayce. {The Semitic Series.) Nimmo.

This book hardly requires a long notice in our columns, since it is merely a handbook, summing up for popular use the results of scholars' researches. For the purposes of our study we need exact references and the very words of the authorities, neither of which will be found here. There are, of course, many points of custom touched upon which are of importance to us, such as the laws of marriage and succession, burial, law, and religion, but the treatment is too summary. There is not even a bibliography. Yet, although the book will not be of use to the folklore student as such, it is bound to interest him in his private and unprofes- sional capacity. It is brightly written and clear, full of quaint things which bring home to us the life of the Euphrates valley four or five thousand years ago. Every now and again we are enlivened by one of Professor Sayce's sweeping generalisations — that " mixt races," for example, are " invariably the best," or that cremation was due to sanitary reasons. There are many important illustrations of the Bible, and we fancy we see some readers open- ing their eyes in horror at Professor Sayce's bold euhemerising of the tower of Babel. In arrangement Professor Sayce is not always happy, or are we to put down to grim humour his coupling together in one chapter Education and Death ? The sections on books, libraries, schools, and writing, are of special interest, but the whole book is interesting.

A Selected Bibliography of Anthropology and Ethnology OF Europe. By W. L. Ripley. Boston (Mass.). 1899.

A selection containing upwards of 2,000 titles cannot fail to be of great value to all students of any branch of anthropology. The labour and knowledge of the compiler must be cordially acknow- ledged. At the same time it must be frankly stated that his judgment is frequently at fault, that his omissions are many and unaccountable, and that his work is weakest when it might have been expected to be strongest, namely, in the selection of works bearing upon the anthropology and ethnology of the British Isles. Moreover, as this is a bibliography compiled by a "specialist," with the definite object of assisting students, one misses those notes of guidance and illumination which the specialist alone can

i