Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/279

 Revieivs. 243

late Colonel Woodthorpe, besides several good photographs. If any criticism may be offered on this excellent monograph, I would suggest that the bibliography is unsatisfactory. It does not give details of dates of publication or of editions, and it is quite useless to refer to papers in publications like the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal without exact reference. It is also imperfect, because it omits the valuable papers by Godwin- Austen and Clarke in the Jour^ial of the Anthropological Institute, Lastly, in his "Table of Contents" Major Gurdon should distinguish folk-lore from folk-tales, and a monograph of this kind should certainly be provided with a map.

W. Crooke.

The Natives of British Central Africa. By A. Werner. A. Constable & Co. Ltd. 1906.

Miss Werner's contribution to the series of The Native Races of the British Empire is one of great charm, as well as of anthropological interest. Her personal experiences among the Yao and Anyanja, and her enthusiasm on their behalf, impart a feeling of intimacy which no amount of knowledge gained from books can give. British Central Africa is technically the Pro- tectorate of that name, comprising only the western and southern sides of the basin of Lake Nyassa. In the minds of most readers it will perhaps have a larger connotation. Even in the former case, it is too wide a term for the real subject of this book, which is mainly concerned with the two tribes just named, only touching the others incidentally. But the Yao and Anyanja are sufficiently important to deserve a book to themselves.

They are, according to their traditions, and probably in fact, cognate tribes. The Anyanja were a peaceful people, into whose territory on the Shire Highlands the more warlike Yao, driven by pressure from the north, broke not long before the middle of the last century. The Yao came from the Portuguese possessions on the eastern side of Lake Nyassa, where many of them still ■dwell. They subjugated the Anyanja, and settling at length side by side and intermarrying with them, began a process of coalescence