No one is better qualified to write on The Pagans
of North Borneo (Hutchinson, 30s.) than Major Owen Rutter. Professional anthropologists, a greedy and discontented race, may ask for more, but the ordinarily intelligent reader, inter- ested in how his fellows live, will feel comfortably replete after a varied and satisfying meal. Major Rutter's sympathetic treatment of Bornean religious beliefs is in marked contrast to the biassed assumptions of some more pretentious mono- graphs, and when we read that "we may well view with amazement the elaborate and equitable body of law which these primitive peoples . . . have built up," we realize that here, at any rate, is an author who will consider his subjects as rational human beings, and not as museum specimens. It is deplorable that, as usual, the first contact with civilization is disastrous to primitives, and that a decrease in the birth rate is one of the inevitable sequelae—and this in spite of the fact that from the beginning the Chartered Company treated native law with respect and with an unwonted breadth of vision. Professor Seligman introduces the volume, which is completed by a couple of maps, an adequate index and a large number of excellent photographs.
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