Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/152

124 or was told concerning them, we must go to his official report. What is given here is as much as could be told in a work intended for the general public. Of religion his account is necessarily superficial. But then that is only what any traveller who has not resided in the country in intimate converse for years with the natives can give; therefore we expect no more. We know in general terms the religion of the Bantu tribes. Dr. Weule does but add a few local touches, without penetrating into the native soul.

I cannot assent to the parallel he draws between the civilized custom of tying a knot in a handkerchief when it is desired to remember something, and the native custom of tying knots on a string to indicate a number. The one is intended to call attention by its strangeness to something of importance to be done or said ; the other is a mode of reckoning and keeping count,—a very different matter.

Dr. Weule worked with German energy, and from a museum point of view his success probably left little to be desired. He has contributed materially to our knowledge of the externals of native life. As regards the more recondite subjects of mental life, he has furnished data which will be valuable for further investigation. Meanwhile, his conclusions must be regarded as purely provisional. The map of his route is useful; but it is curious that neither this nor the four coloured plates are enumerated in the list of illustrations.

knowledge of the folklore of the Santáls, that interesting non-Aryan race occupying the tract known as the Santál Parganas on the eastern outskirts of the Chutia Nagpur plateau in Bengal, has hitherto been mainly derived from the small collection of tales published in 1891 by Dr. A. Campbell. The present series of tales was recorded by Rev. O. Bodding of the Scandinavian