When he gets on to the present-day conditions in Zanzibar
(Witherby, 25s.), Mr. W. H. Ingrains is interesting and his information is reliable, though his style ("reeking naught " and so forth) is apt to be irritating. His long experience enables him to give us a comprehensive picture of the manners and customs of the Swahili. The early historical part, however, 'is cursory and very far from accurate. He has a Sumerian bee in his bonnet, and all sorts of fanciful derivations intrude without any justification, while he appears to accept whole-heartedly a view of Heliolithic culture which most anthropologists have rejected. It is surprising also to find a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute writing of Bantu shrines as " devil- houses." He is dogmatic about the origin of the Bantu, bUt his dogmatism is not convincing, and there seems to be little grounds for his suggestion that the Manisa of Idris is the preseht Mombasa. A great deal of his early history, indeed, is hyph- thetical, though it is stated as a fact beyond dispute. It would have been a better book if he had kept to the later periods, and had avoided speculations into remote contacts and
origins. • * * * *
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