20 AUGUST 1904, Page 22

The Persian Gulf and the South Sea Islands. By Sir

E. C. Boehm, Bart. (Horace Cox. 6s.)—There can be no doubt that the photographs with which this book is illustrated are admirable. We could have spared, however, the representations of cannibal practices now extinct. The Fiji people, doubtless, have a "past." But why bring it up against them ? The book itself is like a hundred others that have been written in the same way and for the same reason. It can hardly be said to be of much intrinsic value; yet any one who desires to go either to one place or the other—if he has to choose he will hardly doubt about preferring the latter—cannot do better than read, by way of preparation, what Sir E. Boehm has to say.