Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/547

 Revieivs. 523

respects also furnish valuable material for the student of com- parative ethnology. Perhaps the most important conclusion at which Mr. Williamson himself arrives is that the Mafulu people may be regarded as having a negrito ancestry, and that a Papuan and Melanesian infusion has occurred subsequently, an opinion in which he is supported by Dr. Keith and Dr. Haddon.

Mr. S. H. Hay, in five appendices to the book, has worked out the linguistic material brought home by Mr. Williamson.

The above-mentioned work by Mr. J. H. P. Murray, the present Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Judicial Officer of Papua, shows that its writer in his sympathetic interest in that wonderful land and its little-known inhabitants is a worthy follower of his dis- tinguished predecessor. Sir William Macgregor. Mr. Murray's book gives a survey of various aspects of British New Guinea as a whole, so far as the land is known, and in the various chapters is concentrated a most useful account of the geography, history, native population, administration of justice, exploration, and de- velopment of the country. In his Introduction Sir William Mac- gregor adds some interesting data bearing on the history of Papua.

Mr. Murray's point of view in writing his book is that of the enlightened and sympathetic administrator. But, in spite of his own modesty in saying that he does not know anything about ethnology, his book also contains material of great value to the student of that science. This does not only apply to the chapters on the native population, but to many of the others as well, in which the narrative is illustrated with anecdotes exemplifying the curious ideas of the natives and at the same time rendering the book itself entertaining. One cannot but be impressed by the care- fulness of the author as an observer, and his anxiety not to express any opinion which might prove to be wrong. He does not even unconditionally contradict the common Papuan legend of the existence of tailed men who always live "just over the next range of mountains ": — " There are perhaps," he says, " no tailed men in New Guinea, but it must be admitted that there are at any rate men of a very lively imagination."

In a book such as that before us we cannot expect to find a very detailed or complete description of the natives, but the author's observations are always interesting and to the point.