770 



NA TURE 



[June 17, 1922 



semi-savage people. He has thus had the opportunity 

 of producing a fine, original work in ethnography, his 

 memoirs being more elaborate than the other volumes 

 of this excellent series which we owe to the enterprise 

 and liberality of the Government of Assam. 



Previous writers have found little that is favourable 

 in the character of the Sema, and speak of their cruelty 

 in war, their treachery and habit of lying. But Mr. 

 Hutton, himself an Irishman, describes them as the 

 Irishmen of the Naga race, generous, hospitable, and 

 frequently improvident, impulsive and cheery, if easily 

 depressed quickly regaining their spirits, readily moved 

 to laughter and merriment under the most unpleasant 

 conditions, while they still preserve a strong vein of 

 fatalism. Their physical endurance in carrying heavy 

 loads for long distances, in bearing cold and exposure, 

 is remarkable, and in warfare and hunting, at any rate 

 by Naga standards, they are plucky and daring. Their 

 women, in appearance stumpy, plain or even ugly, 

 are cheerful, faithful wives and dutiful daughters. Their 

 art is limited to the decoration of their dress, weapons, 

 and the Genua posts which mark the taboo limits of 

 their villages. 



As is usually the case with semi-savage tribes, the 

 Sema Hve under a rigorous system of taboos, much 

 more restrictive than those of the Hindu caste system. 

 This type of taboo, known as Genna, is largely regulated 

 by the agricultural seasons, and is enforced at sowing, 

 harvest, and other farming operations. On such occa- 

 sions work is suspended and special diet with numerous 

 other trivial restrictions is enforced. They believe in 

 a Creator, vaguely conceived, who interferes little in 

 the affairs of men, in spirits of the sky and of the 

 wild, spirits which cause delirium, spoil the crops and 

 breed strife and quarrels, the spirits of the dead which 

 fetch the living when they die. The basis of society 

 is not the tribe or the clan, but the village, and they 

 have evolved an elaborate system of social law. They 

 manufacture for their own use excellent cotton cloth, 

 not using fibres as the Angami do. Iron work is of 

 recent introduction and follows methods borrowed 

 from adjoining tribes. In spite of this advancement 

 in social and industrial culture, head-hunting, success 

 in which entitles the hero to wear gauntlets decorated 

 with cowry shells and a collar of pigs' tushes, prevails, 

 and the heads of women are specially valued, probably 

 because they are secured with difficulty, women working 

 only near the village in time of danger. 



Mr. Hutton has described this strange type of society 

 with wide knowledge and sympathy. His book is 

 comprehensive, well arranged and supplied with maps 

 and illustrations. Mr. H. Balfour, who writes a fore- 

 word, does full justice to it as an ethnographical study, 

 and he informs us that Mr. Hutton has liberally 

 NO. 2746, VOL. 109] 



presented to the Pitt Rivers Museum the greater 

 part of his fine collections, an important gift to his 

 old University. 



More Books on Relativity. 



A Criticism oj Einstein and his Problem. By W. H. V. 

 Reade. Pp. vi-i-126. (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 

 1922.) 45^. 6d. net. 



Relativity for All. By Herbert Dingle. Pp. viii-i-72. 

 (London : Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 2s. net. 



Einstein and the Universe : A Popular Exposition 0/ 

 the Famous Theory. By Charles Nordmann. Trans- 

 lated by Joseph M'Cabe. Pp. 185. (London : 

 T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1922.) 105. 6d. net. 



Le Principe de Relativite et la Theorie de la Gravitation. 

 Le9ons professees en 1921 et 1922 a I'Ecole poly- 

 technique et au Museum d'Histoire naturelle. Par 

 Prof. J. Becquerel. Pp. ix + 342. (Paris : Gauthier^ 

 Villars et Cie, 1922.) 25 francs. 



La Theorie einsteinienne de la Gravitation : Essai de 

 vulgarisation de la theorie. Par Prof. Gustave 

 Mie. Ouvrage traduit de I'allemand. Pp. xi4-ii9. 

 (Paris : J. Hermann, 1922.) 4-50 francs. 



Vi.iher actuel et ses precurseurs {simple recit). Par 

 E. M. Lemeray. Preface de L. Lecorme. Pp. 

 ix+141. (Paris : Gauthier- Villars et Cie, 1922.) 



Raum und Zeit im Lichte der speziellen Relativitdts- 

 theorie. Versuch eines synthetischen Aufbaus der 

 speziellen Relatitivdtstheorie. Von Dr. C. Von 

 Horvath. Pp. v + 58. (Berlin : Julius Springer, 

 1 92 1.) England, 36 marks ; Germany, 12 marks. 



THE stream continues. Here are seven more books 

 on relativity. It is difficult to know where to 

 begin in commenting on such a collection. Mr. Reade's 

 perhaps may be dismissed with a word ; it ought not 

 to have been written. Mr. Dingle's, on the other hand, 

 is a serious little book by one who has caught the spirit 

 of the matter. Within the limits of seventy small 

 pages, without any mathematical symbols . he has done 

 as well as can be expected in suggesting the various 

 strains of thought that go to the making up of the 

 theory. It is neither extravagant nor childish ; it gives 

 enough and not too much emphasis to illustrative 

 analogies. The reader of this account may be assured 

 that he is not being misled. 



M. Nordmann's work, to which Viscount Haldane 

 contributes a preface, is a much more ambitious pro- 

 duction than that of Mr. Dingle and calls for more 

 lengthy comment. To quote from the preface : 



" The Latin capacity for eliminating abstractness 

 from the description of facts is everywhere apparent. 

 . . . This book could hardly have been written by an 

 Englishman. The difficulty in his way would have 



