io6 



NATURE 



[July 27, 191 1 



known part of the Delta (Forcados to the Nun), thi 

 negroes of the Niger mouths and their accessory streams 

 are now arranged in the following ethnic groups. 

 Beginning on the west, the Edo or Benin peoples, 

 treated of in the book under review ; the Jekri on the 

 south or south-west of these; the Ijo, south-east of 

 the Edo (Sobo), and especially in the eastern pari oi 

 the main delta, between the Nun mouth and Opobo ; 

 the Ibo, north of the Ijo ; the Aro ruling caste (almost 

 semi-Caucasian in their physiognomy and skin-coloui I, 

 between the Ibo and the Cross river; and the semi- 

 Bantu Kwo and Akwa tribes between the Opobo and 

 the Efik people of Calabar. Some of the Aro men 

 and women resemble the Fula in their clear-cut, deli- 

 cate profiles, their thin, well-formed lips, and lithe, 

 finely-shaped bodies; and (as already remarked) there 

 are savages from the western part of the delta, which, 

 to the reviewer, seemed of an exceptionally low and 

 brutal type. 



The Edo-speaking people of the ancient kingdom or 

 confederation of Benin are mainly the subject of Mr. 

 Northcote Thomas's monograph, though allusions to 

 and some comparisons are made with certain of the 

 other tribes of the Delta and with the Yoruba of Lagos 

 hinterland. Linguistically and racially the Edo group 

 seems to be allied to the Yoruba and also to the E'we 

 family (of Dahome). Their somewhat remarkable 

 civilisation (like that of the Aro and Efik to the east 

 and south, so strikingly superior to the barbarity of 

 the Ijo and Kwo) has come to them from the north 

 and north-east, and may perhaps be traced back to 

 the Songhai culture of mediaeval Nigeria. 



Mr. Thomas has very little to say about the bronze- 

 casting which has made the culture of Benin famous 

 in ethnology. It seems to have died out almost 

 entirely amongst the Edo people of to-day, who confine 

 themselves to forging brass and iron ornaments and 

 implements. 



The work under review deals in part i. first with 

 the affinities of the Edo people and the surrounding 

 tribes, so far as there are any. Then comes a brief 

 sketch of the Edo speech, followed by ethnological 

 notes on this people, between pp. n and 123; an 

 appendix on the pronunciation of the Edo speech, to- 

 gether with sample vocabularies for filling up by other 

 inquirers. Also there is an interesting appendix on 

 genealogies and terms and degrees of kinship ; and 

 another on suggestions, for other anthropologists, as 

 to the best procedure in photographing African peoples. 

 (Though not without interest these appendices on 

 linguistics and on photography are disappointing to 

 the already trained ethnologist, who expects Mr. 

 Thomas's book to be entirelv filled with the results 

 of his own researches.) Part ii. contains (a) a number 

 of inlerlincally translated texts to illustrate the Edo, 

 Ishan, Kukuruku (and numerous dialects), and Sobo 

 languages; (b) a grammar of the Edo (Bini, Benin) 

 language; (c) a comparative dictionary of the Edo 

 languages and dialects; and (d ! English dic- 



tionary. 



The index comes near the end of the first part, and 



is singularly poor and inadequate. It is strange that 



this should be so in a work which is sufficiently good 



ami important to merit ver) lull indexing. For it ma) 



NO. 2178, VOL. X; I 



be said without more ado that Mr. Northcote Thomas's 

 study of the Edo-speaking people will take a prominent 

 place in ethnological works dealing with the negro. 

 It is all first-rate, first-hand information, and errs only 

 by omission and not by commission. Particularly 

 valuable are the sections dealing with religion and 

 magic; with marriage and birth customs; with native 

 law and trial by ordeal; and the notes on the native 

 calendar. The texts taken down from the many 

 native informants not only exhibit the exact structure 

 of the different languages, but illustrate very effec- 

 tively the subject-matter of negro stories, the some- 

 what gross indecency of speech in regard to certain 

 legends, and in general the outlook on the world 

 around them of negroes that have hitherto been almost 

 entirely uninfluenced by the modern European. 



In arranging the English version in his comparative 

 dictionary, Mr. Thomas should have invited the assist- 

 ance of someone acquainted with African zoology. 

 There are no "pheasants" or "crow pheasants" in 

 Africa, and no "badgers." H. H. Johnston. 



COT.OIR AND CONSTITUTION. 

 Die Beziehungen zwischen Farbe und Konstitution bei 

 organischen V erbindungen. By Prof. H. Ley. 

 Pp. viii + 246 + Taf. ii. (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1911.) 

 Price 7 marks. 



MANY chemists will welcome Prof. Ley's work 

 on the relations existing between selective 

 absorption and constitution in the case of organic 

 compounds. The subject has attracted considerable 

 attention of late years, and probably more definite 

 conclusions would have already been reached had 

 physicists rather more knowledge of organic chem- 

 istry and organic chemists a better acquaintance with 

 physical conceptions. 



The work is divided into two parts, 204 pages being 

 devoted to the subject indicated in the title, whilst 

 the remainder of the book deals with the methods of 

 spectroscopic work. Prof. Ley insists at an early 

 stage on the necessity of making no distinction in 

 kind between selective absorption in the visible and 

 ultra-violet regions of the spectrum, and proceeds to 

 a consideration of Beer's law, "extinction-coefficient," 

 and the influences, such as concentration, solvent, and 

 temperature, which cause variation in absorption 

 spectra. 



In dealing with the different theories which have 

 been proposed to account for the colour of organic 

 compounds, Prof. Ley starts with the early efforts of 

 Graebe and Liebermann and of Witt, and divides the 

 chromophors into eight groups. One cannot fail to 

 l»- struck with the universal existence of conjugated 

 double linkages in compounds which show selective 

 absorption, though in the ketenes chromophoric pro- 

 perties seem to be associated with adjacent double 

 linkages. The triple linkage, on the other hand, 

 seems to have littli 1 ffect, and benzoylphenylacetylene 

 i- a colourless compound. The quinonoid constitu- 

 tion ol man\ coloured compounds and H. Kauff- 

 mann's more recent development of the auxochrome 

 theory are then discussed, whilst considerable atten- 

 tion is devoted to the influence of the solvent and 



