270 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VOL: XXXII. 
classes and individuals is described in detail and rendered more 
easily comprehensible by a table, or family tree. The decorative art 
of these people seems not to have passed that primitive form of 
expression exhibited in body painting; the patterns used are shown 
in color drawings. Rock paintings are almost unknown. The vari- 
ous kinds of vegetable and animal foods are enumerated and some 
account given of their preparation. No mention is made of those 
fruits and bulbs which in other parts of the continent are rendered 
innocuous by elaborate preparation before they can be used. We 
notice that the green ant is eaten raw. The method of capture differs 
somewhat from that in vogue elsewhere ; instead of allowing the ants 
to crawl up a stick into the mouth of the hunter, he stamps upon the 
ant-hill until the ants run up his legs, when they “get scraped or 
swept off as fast as they come up.” 
A chapter is devoted to the subject of sports and festivals, includ- 
ing an account of the Molonga set of corroborees which require 
five nights for their completion. 
The most interesting and valuable part of the work is that dealing 
with the medical practice and the superstitious rites and ceremonies 
of the aborigines. This sort of material is the most difficult to 
_ obtain from savages, or, for that matter, from people in any grade of 
culture. The subject of religion is not separately treated, and the 
incidental references are unsatisfactory and incomplete. Careful 
inquiries were made, but all the information obtained is summed up 
in a single sentence: “In his natural state, the fear of death is but 
as nothing to the savage; he has a hazy notion of the corpse ‘ getting 
older and moving about elsewhere’ when he ceases to bring food and 
tobacco any longer to the burial-place; he has no dread of future 
punishment, no hope of reward in another life.” Dr. Roth’s pro- 
fessional training and familiarity with the Boulia language enabled 
him to thoroughly investigate the causes and results of the mutilations 
practised by these people; his conclusions tend to disprove the 
accepted theories accounting for the mika operation. The brief 
papers of Miklukho-Maclay and the accounts of other writers have 
given some information concerning these ceremonies and the sexual 
relation in general, but the present work is the most complete that 
has yet appeared. 
A very full index and glossary is furnished. Drawings to the 
number of over 400 add materially to the value of the work, though 
the arrangement of the explanations of the plates at the beginning 
of the volume is not a convenient one. 
