Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/414

 ^yS Reviews.

author has explained his scheme, which he appears to have carried out excellently, and with as great completeness as could be expected in a work of the kind. The work will be indispens- able to all folklorists and students of literature connected with the Decameron. At the commencement of the volume we have a "List of Principal Works referred to," running to 8 pages, and at the end a short but comprehensive index of 12 clearly-printed columns. A detailed notice of a book of this character is im- practicable, and we must content ourselves with pointing out its salient features.

W. F. KiRBY.

Die StELLUNG DER PYGMAE^fv6LKER IN DER EnTWICKLUNGS- GESCHICHTE DES MeNSCHEN. Von P. W. SCHMIDT, S.V.D.

(Studien und Forschungen zur Menschen und Volkerkunde unter wissenschaftlicher Leitung von Georg Buschen). Stuttgart: Verlag von Strecker und Schroder, 19 10. 4to, pp. ix-H3i5.

Were Adam and Eve pygmies ?

The Pygmies, Father Schmidt argues, are " the oldest group of men, ethnologically, that are accessible to us now." He is inclined to surmise that they date back to a period earlier even than Neanderthal man, and that they " represent the earliest stage in the evolution of man." There are indications, he thinks, that "the original home of the Pygmies is to be looked for, not in Central Africa, but further east, nearer the present abode of the Asiatic Pygmies " ; and that, I suppose, would bring it nearer the Garden of Eden. However, though fallen somewhat from the high estate which Father Schmidt conjectures that they enjoyed in their original abode, they still clearly recognise and worship a Supreme Being, and "we are justified in saying that these people have a genuine monotheism, the perfect purity of which is flecked by a few anthropomorphisms only." " In the oldest group of the Andamanese we have before us the recognition and worship of a genuinely Supreme Being, and a religion which in internal