416 
being responsible only for the section dealing with 
language, although each author has ‘tas far as 
possible revised and checked the worl of the other.’ 
An intreduction in which Mr. Skeat sketches with 
great skill and literary force the environment of the 
jungle-dwelling folk shows how this has produced 
characteristic forms of culture, and has compelled the 
jungle tribes to become perhaps the finest hunters 
s 
and trappers in Asia. This is succeeded by the first 
section of the work, that on racial characters; and 
here, at the very beginning of the work, the reader 
is faced by its gravest defect; in the whole of the 
first volume there is no map of the Peninsula, the 
necessity for which soon becomes manifest and is 
most urgently felt, e.g, on p. 55, where the distri- 
bution of the Sakai is given. Indeed, the only map 
of the Peninsula appears at the end of vol. where 
it forms part of a small-scale map of Indo-China 
(about two degrees to the inch), which includes the 
NATURE 
[ FepRuary 28, 1907 
family the individual members of which, to 
mention only one physical character, have wavy, 
curly, and tightly coiled, almost frizzly hair, A 
number of valuable data bearing upon questions of 
race are given in tabular form in an appendix; some 
of these are by Dr. W. L. H. Duckworth, who also 
contributes a note in the text upon the craniological 
collection made by Messrs, Annandale and Robinson, 
A short préeis of the distinguishing cultural peculi- 
arities of the jungle people most uselully follows the 
description of their physical peculiarities. | The 
Semang are the most nomadic, the wilder tribes 
“never staying it alleged more than three days 
in one place’; their habitations consist of natural 
shelters under overhanging rocks or of the simplest 
form of leaf shelters. Their national weapon is the 
bow, 
Is 
With poisoned arrows, though the blow-pipe has 
been to some extent adopted; 
feel no such 
they are monogamous, 
of the ghosts of their dead as 
do the Sakai and Jalkun, 
The Sakai, though largely 
nomadic, are less wild than 
the Semang, and, unlike the 
latter, tattoo the face, while 
body painting has been de- 
veloped into a regular 
system. Their weapon is the 
blow-pipe, with —_ poisoned 
darts. The Jakun are only 
partially nomadic, and usu- 
ally cultivate rice, sugar, or 
other plants, especially durian 
trees; they male and use 
dug-out canoes and the blow- 
pipe. They have chiefs, who 
in some cases have regalia, 
their marriage and burial 
rites are peculiar, and they 
have many magic ceremonies 
and invocations, in other 
words, their culture is 
* nroto-Malay. 
The habitations 
jungle tribes, which 
cussed in chapter 
particularly intersting. 
ing with shallow rock shel- 
ters and the buttresses of 
trees the series passes 
through the ‘‘ primitive bee- 
and fear 
” 
of these 
are dis- 
iii,, are 
Start- 
Fic. 1.—Besisi Zoomorphs. Centipede on Besisi flute; L'zard on shaft 
‘Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula.” 
and part of Siam. 
discussion of racial affinities; 
Mr. Skeat will have nothing to do with the pan- 
negrito beliefs of some of the earlier writers, but 
leaves it doubtful whether he follows Virchow in 
regarding the Sakai as Dravidian or related 
to certain of the wild tribes of the interior of Cam- 
bodia, with whose language the Sakai dialects have 
an admitted affinity. The Jakun are regarded as 
a composite group of principally aborigin: il-Malay 
tribes, many of which have intermarried freely with 
Semang and Sakai. It only necessary to look 
through the numerous illustrations of individuals or 
groups, posed so as to show their physical character- 
istics, contained in volumes to how freely 
Sumatra, Cambodia, 
to the 
Andamans, 
But to return 
as 
is 
these see 
the jungle races have in certain instances mixed with 
each other, and the results of such intermarriage 
are shown, eé.g., in a photograph of a Sakai 
NO. 1948, VOL. 75 | 
hive ’ or round hut composed 
! of a number of palm leaves 
thrust into the ground in a 
circle, and is continued 
through the communal shelter 
(which is originally only an 
of Besisi blowpipe. From 
oval “beehive ’’) until a brealk occurs, and a 
hut, originally probably a small granary or 
storehouse on ‘one or more high posts, is reached, 
which, as the height and stoutness of the posts be- 
come reduced, tends to conform with the common 
Malayan hut type. In this series no mention has 
been made of tree houses, though Semang and Sakai 
alike make use of these, w hich may var y from a few 
roughly interwoven boughs to veritable houses in trees. 
The houses of the less wild Jakun resemble in a 
general way those of the Malays, but are much 
smaller than the latter, while the eaves are often 
carried down to the level of the floor, It is among 
these people that tribal halls, called balai_by both 
Malay and Jalun, first appear, and Mr. Skeat de- 
scribes how some Besisi met with on the Selangor 
coast built a balai at right angles to, and in continuity 
with, the house of their tribal chief (Batin). Such 
