Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/410

322 at every moving object they saw In course of time the epidemic wore itself out; but while it lasted the civilised Motuans were as superstitious as any of their neighbours could have been."

It is always a pleasure to be put in possession of the work of a master-hand—the work of a scholar who has been long and often tried and never found wanting to his subject, a work which we feel we can take up with confidence to learn from it. At the present day we are smothered in manuals of instruction which for a couple of shillings pretend to put us in possession of information on every subject, sufficient like the letter P to make an ass pass, but which yet do little but hand on from generation to generation a crowd of vulgar errors long ago exploded among the "upper ten" of scholarship. Hence we have nowadays to approach almost every book that comes out, with a winnow in our hands.

Dr. Pitrè's works are the outcome of both love and knowledge of his subject, and the present year has seen the completion of four