11 MARCH 1922, Page 23

The Sema Ragas. By J. H. Hutton. (Macmillan. 40s. net.)

—Mr. Hutton, an officer of the Assam Government, recently published a valuable monograph on the Angami Nagas, which was reviewed at length in the Spectator. He has now produced an equally complete and scholarly account of the Sema Nagas, who live to the north of the Angamis in the hills forming the watershed between Assam and Burma. He says that he has obtained all his information at first-hand. He gives an elaborate essay on the Sema language which had not been written down when he began to learn it from the natives. The appendix of folk-tales is curious and interesting ; there are many photographs and a number of pedigrees. We are glad to notice that the book is published at the cost of the Assam Government which, as Mr. Henry Balfour says in a preface, has done good work for ethnology and for efficient administration by encouraging its officers to prepare accounts of the border tribes among whieh they have had to live and work.