first, that customary law is determined mainly by religion; secondarily, by locality; and that so far as it is a matter of caste or tribe at all, it is more generally a question of social status rather than one peculiar to the particular caste or tribe concerned. Mr. Rose's pamphlet must be taken into account by all students of the subjects with which it attempts to deal. W. CROOKE.

KAFIR SOCIALISM AND THE DAWN OF INDIVIDUALISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE NATIVE PROBLEM. By DUDLEY KIDD. London: A. & C. Black, 1908.

THIS book, addressed as it is to the politician and imperialist rather than to the anthropologist as such, may seem at first sight hardly to call for review in these pages. On such a topic,

however, as the treatment due to the black man from the white, one can trust the sympathetic author of The Essential Kafir and Savage Childhood to "think black," with enlightening results even for the pure theorist. Besides, pure theory cannot turn its back on practical reform, when the latter puts a respect for pure theory in the forefront of its demand. "Before we can understand the bearings of the Native Problem," says Mr. Kidd, "we must study native customs and thought." He consequently moves (and, I am sure, the Folk-lore Society will be only too glad to second), that a Bureau of Ethnology be established at the Cape forthwith. Let some millionaire endow it, and endow it handsomely, he suggests. Is this too much to hope? A South African magnate has recently endowed Colonial History at Oxford on the most magnificent scale. May we not, then, expect that a similar patriotism, at once local and truly imperial, will suffice to equip the dominant race in South Africa with the means of removing once for all those misunderstandings with the Kafirs which the

into the dark places of the Kafir mind. Mr. Kidd's plea is the better timed inasmuch as there is some chance of seeing a central Bureau of Ethnology founded in this country in the not distant future. Such an institution could not, of course, take the place of a local Bureau. On the contrary, it must help to call into existence many such ethnological laboratories throughout the Empire, thereafter co-ordinating their labours, and enabling both theoretic results and maxims of applied Ethnology to be interchanged between one native-ruling portion of the British world and the other. Doubtless the Cape has done not a little for anthropology already, and certain "blue-books" have proved of the highest value in a science in which there is so much that must be read and yet so little that is worth reading twice. Mr. Kidd, however, is bent on showing that the fringe of the subject of Kafir psychology and sociology has hardly been touched so far; and he says enough to assure the man in the street of what the man in the study has been all along aware, namely, that the most fundamental notions of government and justice entertained by the Kafir are at present unwittingly violated by our most well-meant endeavours to improve his condition.

Insisting as he does that the essential need is for more light, Mr. Kidd does not spoil his case by indulging in premature solutions of the native problem. He views with a certain regret, it is true, the gradual break-up of the "socialistic”—it might, perhaps, be termed more safely the "patriarchal "-regime under which the black man loyally submitted to the social will as embodied in the chief. But he sees that we cannot, in the interest alike of civilisation and of our own security, allow the chief to make war, or to superintend the 'smelling-out' of witches. On the other hand, to inculcate anything approaching a like respect for the substituted authority is impossible so long as we do not try to meet the Kafir's ancestral modes of thought half-way. For the rest, to awaken a sense of individualism in the natives is shown to be the inevitable result of educating them on our lines; and Mr. Kidd is not opposed to this, so long as in the process we do not ruin the finer traits of Kafir character, which he proves to be still there, but, on the contrary, fasten on them and develop them to

first, that customary law is determined mainly by religion; secondarily, by locality; and that so far as it is a matter of caste or tribe at all, it is more generally a question of social status rather than one peculiar to the particular caste or tribe concerned. Mr. Rose's pamphlet must be taken into account by all students of the subjects with which it attempts to deal. W. CROOKE.

KAFIR SOCIALISM AND THE DAWN OF INDIVIDUALISM: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE NATIVE PROBLEM. By DUDLEY KIDD. London: A. & C. Black, 1908.

THIS book, addressed as it is to the politician and imperialist rather than to the anthropologist as such, may seem at first sight hardly to call for review in these pages. On such a topic, however, as the treatment due to the black man from the white, one can trust the sympathetic author of The Essential Kafir and Savage Childhood to "think black," with enlightening results even for the pure theorist. Besides, pure theory cannot turn its back on practical reform, when the latter puts a respect for pure theory in the forefront of its demand. "Before we can understand the bearings of the Native Problem," says Mr. Kidd, "we must study native customs and thought." He consequently moves (and, I am sure, the Folk-lore Society will be only too glad to second), that a Bureau of Ethnology be established at the Cape forthwith. Let some millionaire endow it, and endow it handsomely, he suggests. Is this too much to hope? A South African magnate has recently endowed Colonial History at Oxford on the most magnificent scale. May we not, then, expect that a similar patriotism, at once local and truly imperial, will suffice to equip the dominant race in South Africa with the means of removing once for all those misunderstandings with the Kafirs which the

into the dark places of the Kafir mind. Mr. Kidd's plea is the better timed inasmuch as there is some chance of seeing a central Bureau of Ethnology founded in this country in the not distant future. Such an institution could not, of course, take the place of a local Bureau. On the contrary, it must help to call into existence many such ethnological laboratories throughout the Empire, thereafter co-ordinating their labours, and enabling both theoretic results and maxims of applied Ethnology to be interchanged between one native-ruling portion of the British world and the other. Doubtless the Cape has done not a little for anthropology already, and certain "blue-books" have proved of the highest value in a science in which there is so much that must be read and yet so little that is worth reading twice. Mr. Kidd, however, is bent on showing that the fringe of the subject of Kafir psychology and sociology has hardly been touched so far; and he says enough to assure the man in the street of what the man in the study has been all along aware, namely, that the most fundamental notions of government and justice entertained by the Kafir are at present unwittingly violated by our most well-meant endeavours to improve his condition.

Insisting as he does that the essential need is for more light, Mr. Kidd does not spoil his case by indulging in premature solutions of the native problem. He views with a certain regret, it is true, the gradual break-up of the "socialistic”—it might, perhaps, be termed more safely the "patriarchal "-regime under which the black man loyally submitted to the social will as embodied in the chief. But he sees that we cannot, in the interest alike of civilisation and of our own security, allow the chief to make war, or to superintend the 'smelling-out' of witches. On the other hand, to inculcate anything approaching a like respect for the substituted authority is impossible so long as we do not try to meet the Kafir's ancestral modes of thought half-way. For the rest, to awaken a sense of individualism in the natives is shown to be the inevitable result of educating them on our lines; and Mr. Kidd is not opposed to this, so long as in the process we do not ruin the finer traits of Kafir character, which he proves to be still there, but, on the contrary, fasten on them and develop them to

problem in a nutshell. An interesting chapter is appended on what might be called Kafir eugenics, and it may at all events be said that Mr. Kidd's findings are in accordance with the latest teaching of science on the highly obscure subject of heredity.

R. R. MARETT.

SOME FOLK-LORE STORIES AND SONGS IN CHINYANJA. With English Translation and Notes. By R. SUTHERLAND RATTRAY, Member of the African Lakes Corporation, Ltd., British Central Africa. With Preface by the REV. ALEXANDER HETHERWICK, D.D. London: S.P.C.K.

THE existence of totemism among the Anyanja has long been known; but there was in some quarters an impression that the institutions connected with it had so far become obsolete as to be capable of throwing very little light on the subject. This may to a certain extent be the case with the Anyanja of the Shire Highlands and the river valley-though less from contact with Europeans than because the tribes have been displaced and broken up by the irruption of the Yaos and the domination of the Makololo. Even here, however, careful observers found hints of a matriarchal clan system and of totem names. Mr. Rattray has carried the matter somewhat further. He has lived for some years among the Achewa or Achipeta of Central Angoniland. These people belong to the race which for convenience' sake we call Anyanja, and speak virtually the same language as those at Kotakota, Likoma and Blantyre. Some words which are not in Dr. Scott's dictionary I recognise as used at Ntumbi, some days' journey further south-where, in fact, the language was very much the same as that in Mr. Rattray's book, though the people spoke of the "Chipetas" as different from themselves. In fact, Mr. Rattray throws light