Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/170

 1 62 Reviews.

We have one bone to pick with the author. On p. 137 occurs the following short paragraph : " A rambling and silly legend is told in connection with a slight depression, supposed to be the mark of a child's foot, which appears on one of the stones at the entrance [of a station, Tratan Aodha]. The former is not worthy of repetition, and the latter is evidently a fossil mark." No legend should be disposed of in so summary a fashion. Those who collect should record, and there are few legends which are not of value to some student or another.

Some Recent Anthropological Essays.

FOLK-LORISTS who are interested in talismans, ancestral worship, and other phases of primitive religions, would do well to glance through a series of papers by Dr. O. Finsch, entitled EtJinologische Erfahrungen und Belegstiicke ans der Siidsee, which have just been concluded. They were published in the Annalen des k. k. naturJiistorischen Hofmuseums, Vienna, A. Holder, and comprised three parts. Part I, Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, etc.), vol. iii (1888), pp. 83-160. Part II, New Guinea : i, British New Guinea ; {a) South-East Coast,, vol. iii (1888), pp. 293-364 ; {U) East Cape and d'Entre- casteaux Islands, vol. vi (1891), pp. 13-33 ; ic) Trobriand, pp. 33-36 ; 2, Kaiser Wilhelms-Land, pp. 37-130. Part III Micronesia, vol. viii (1893): i, Gilbert Islands, pp. 19-89; 2, Marshall Islands, pp. 1 19-182; Carolines, pp. 182-383, more particularly Kuschai, Ponape, Ruk, and Mortlock. Scattered through these pages are numerous details, which it is well not to lose sight of; even museum catalogues, whether published such as this is, or unpublished, as is usually the case, occasionally contain notes of considerable interest to students of comparative religions.

Analogous to the foregoing is a quarto book, entitled Ethnographische Beschrijving van de West-en Noordhist van Nederlandsch Nienw-Guinea, by F. S. A. de Clcrcq and