Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/195

 Reviews. 1 7 1

theism and sufificiently cultivated to have adopted a syncretism which ultimately issued in monotheism.

Dr. Cobb has written a courageous and suggestive book, and if in some points he seem needlessly conservative, his earnest judi- cial spirit will commend itself to all who are jealous for the honour of English scholarship.

Hebrew Idolatry and Superstition : its Place in Folk- lore. By Elford Higgins. Cheap Edition. London : EUiot Stock, 1895.

This little book is an adaptation to Hebrew Idolatry and Super- stition of Mr. Gomme's argument in Ethnology in Folklore. It is ingenious and interesting, but labours under the defect of ignoring the results of criticism as applied to the Old Testament.

The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, based chiefly on the MSS. of the late Hugh Brooke Low, Sarawak Government Service. By Henry Ling Roth. 2 vols. London : Truelove and Hanson, 1896.

These two splendid volumes, to which Mr. Andrew Lang con- tributes an amusing and interesting preface, are a monument of almost German patience, industry, and learning. They do not purport to be anything but a compilation. As a compilation, however, they are in most particulars a model. There is no part of the lives and beliefs of the peoples with whom he deals that Mr. Ling Roth does not illustrate, so far as his materials go ; and he has gathered from museums and private collections a vast number of figures of the natives and their productions which will be of the greatest use to anthropological students. In this way he has made the book a cyclopaedia of ethnographical information on the tribes in question.

We are inclined to think that the arrangement might have been improved. The tribes are numerous, and their customs vary considerably. It is somewhat confusing to read a custom relating, say, to the disposal of the dead, and to go on to the next para- graph and there read a statement wholly inconsistent with the former. More careful perusal discloses that Mr. Ling Roth is