424 RtePORt— 1901. 



Of the foregoing (1) a small selection of the best fables atid folk-taleS 

 has been made, and will now shortly appear, under the auspices of the 

 University Press. It is entitled ' Fables and Folk-tales from an Eastern 

 Forest.' (2) The notes on religious ceremonies include detailed descrip- 

 tions of the rites connected with marriage, adolescence, and death ; annual 

 ceremonies for the expulsion of evil spirits from the villages by means of 

 spirit-boats ; iiivocations of the elephant-spirit, &c. ; hunting, fishing, 

 and trapping charms, and ceremonies performed by the medicine-man both 

 for purposes of divination and for the expulsion of evil spirits from sick 

 persons by means of good ones, as well as various spiritualistic perform- 

 ances such as the fish-trap dance, which was witnessed in several places. 



Other of my notes describe the expulsion of evil spirits from inanimate 

 objects, e.g., fruit trees and crops, as well as various methods of working 

 upon nature by means of 'make-believe,' e.g., by the ceremony of taking 

 the rice- soul, by ceremonies for the production and prevention of wind 

 and rain, &.;. 



This latter class includes a great many notes on superstitions about 

 natural phenomena, birds, beasts, &c., which will be valuable for pur- 

 poses of comparison with the beliefs held by the West Coast Malays. 



Aborii/ines. 



In order to deal with my notes upon the wild aborigines, I have 

 planned the outlines of a book, which I hope to publish at no very distant 

 date, in which they will be incorporated together with much of the 

 information previously collected by myself on the same subject as well as 

 that obtained from other writers. The information collected during the 

 expedition consisted of notes on physical characteristics, dress, ornaments, 

 weapons, hunting and fishing, food and cooking, agriculture and arts, 

 music, songs and dances, wedding and funeral ceremonies, medicinal and 

 other notes, mythology and superstitions, magic and religion, vocabularies 

 and language, and a variety of similar subjects. 



A chapter on the measurements taken and the physical characteristics 

 of the aborigines is being worked up by Messrs. \V. L. H. Duckworth 

 and Laidlaw. The phonographic records of their songs have been sent to 

 Dr. R. J. Lloyd, of Liverpool, the well-known phonetician, who has 

 already commenced work upon them. The vocabularies and gi-ammatical 

 notes (the former consisting, I believe, of several thousand words) have 

 been sent to Mr. C. O. Blagden, who has kindly undertaken to write the 

 chapter on the language. 



Phrams. 



As regards the Book of the Phrams, referred to in my last report, I 

 regret to say that I am not yet able to report )nuch progress. The only 

 evidence as yet forthcoming has been of a negative character, though it is 

 nevertheless by no means without importance. The Phram-book has been 

 examined by Dr. Grierson, of the Linguistic Survey of India, who has 

 pronounced it not to be composed in any Indian dialect. What appears 

 to be required for its decipherment is a combined knowledge of Siamese 

 and Sanskrit, or Pali, a combination which has hitherto proved not very 

 easy to encounter. 



