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418 connected with initiation and magic, special attention has been paid by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen to the totemic system and to matters connected with the social organization of the tribes; and here again the authors insist upon the differences between the groups of tribes, and that the customs of no one tribe or group can be taken as typical of Australia generally in in any other sense than as broad outline. Both works deal with considerable fullness with the institution of marriage among the Australians, and the customs by which too close intermarriage is prevented. Among other subjects treated with especial fullness by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are the totems, the bull-roarers, the Intichuma ceremonies (associated with the totems), the initiation ceremonies, customs relative to the knockngknocking [sic] out of teeth, traditions, burial and mourning, spirit individuals, medicine men and magic, methods of obtaining wives, myths, clothing, weapons, implements, decorative art, and names. Professor Semon formed a moderate opinion of the capacity of the Australians. Though coarse and heavy, their faces are not bad looking and have expression. They are "no link between monkeys and men, but human creatures through and through," though of one of the lowest types. They have no pottery, no agriculture, no abstract ideas of any kind, can not count very far, but are clever in learning to write, read, and draw, are experts in signaling, and have their intellect and senses "brilliantly developed in all directions bearing on the hunt," with great dexterity in the use of weapons.

 

Miss Mary H. Kingsley has given in her West African Studies a book marked by pungent wit and striking originality in its sketches of adventure and observation, and containing in the chapters devoted to ethnology results of her personal studies. She was already known by a record of her adventures of a young Englishwoman traveling alone through some of the worst regions of West Africa, embodied in her book Travels in West Africa, which was published in the latter part of 1898. The present book may be regarded, as its name implies, as the result and the embodiment of the afterthoughts of that hazardous journey. It includes, after descriptions in which the unconventional directness of expression is much to be remarked, an account of African characteristics and a description of fishing in West Africa, chapters of a soberer sort on fetich, schools of fetich, witchcraft, African medicine and the witch doctor, and historical and economical chapters on Early Trade, French Discovery, Commerce, the Crown Colony System and some of its incidents. The Clash of Cultures, and African Property. Miss Kingsley's criticisms of the present system of administration being regarded as rather destructive, she endeavors to set forth, in a chapter entitled An Alternative Plan, "some other way wherein the African colonies could be managed." Special attention is invited by the author to two articles in the appendix to the volume by M. le Comte C. N. de Cardi and Mr. John Harford. We are pleased to note the high appreciation which Miss Kingsley expresses of the anthropological work concerning west-coast tribes of our former contributor. Colonel A. B. Ellis—Sir A. B. Ellis when he died.

Mr. Frederick Palmer's In the Klondyke is an unpretentious book and free from the appearance of sensationalism, but gives a clear and graphic account of the region and its ways and of the getting there at the breaking up of winter. The author was at Dyea late in February, having intended to go with a Government relief expedition which had