Papuan Fairy Tales. By Annie Ker. (Macmillan and Co. 5s.
net.)—These folk-lore tales, forty in number, were collected by Miss Ker during a sojourn of nine years at a mission station on the north-east coast of Papua. She has done well to preserve them, for contact with the white man and the new knowledge which the white man brings are likely to make the oral tradition cease. They have the curious similarities and dissimilarities which we notice in the folk-lores of the world. Perhaps they have a special element of savagery, almost strong enough to suit the taste of the modern reader of novels. Papua has not wholly given up cannibalism, or, having given it up, looks back to the days of plenty which it provided with a fond regret. "The Wise Wagtail," in which the husband eats his five wives, is a specimen. "There are lands where a man has but one woman to wife and is therewith content. But in Papua it is not so."
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