RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 239 



Murray. The first (in the April number) is entitled " Child- 

 sacrifice among European Witches." The writer says that 

 " in studying the cult of the witches, plain and irrefragable 

 proof is found that the personage called by Christian writers 

 1 the Devil, ' was considered by the witches themselves to be 

 God incarnate as man. To this deity they made sacrifices of 

 various kinds, the most important of such sacrifices being 

 that of a child. The child was either a witch's child or was 

 unbaptized ; in other words, it did not belong to the Christian 

 Church." The writer gives some interesting evidence, on 

 which she comments : " It is impossible to believe in any great 

 frequency of this sacrifice, but there is considerable foundation 

 in fact for the statement that children were killed, and it 

 accounts as nothing else can for the cold-blooded murders of 

 children of which the witches were sometimes accused." The 

 second article (in June) is entitled " Divination by Witches' 

 Familiars." Extraordinary evidence of supposed divination 

 by these " imps," " familiars," or " puckerels " is given. 



In the May number of Man there is a long article by Cap- 

 tain E. G. Fenton, R.A.M.C, on certain grooves to be seen 

 in Malta which he believes to be cart-ruts dating from the 

 early Middle Ages or even from Roman times. In the June 

 number there is a reply from Prof. Boyd Dawkins in which he 

 contends that these supposed cart-ruts are really only " joints " 

 widened by the weathering of the calcareous rocks. 



Another article, " A Linguistic Fragment from Western 

 Kordofan," by Brenda Z. Seligman, in Man (for April) also 

 calls for mention. The fragment in question is a short voca- 

 bulary obtained from an old Pygmy, the words belonging to a 

 dialect which is apparently unknown. 



To the June number of the same magazine Dr. Bronislaw 

 Malinowski contributes a long article on " Fishing in the 

 Trobriand Islands." 



Few authors have worked more energetically than has Mr. 

 Reid Moir to convince the world of the reality of pre-Palseolithic 

 implements. He has again set forth his views in a paper 

 entitled " The Ancient Flint Implements of Suffolk," which 

 will be found in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of 

 Archaeology and Natural History, vol. xvi. pt. 2. 



Those interested in the religions of savages may be referred 

 to a new essay by Dr. E. S. Hartland entitled " Religion among 



