TRIBES OF THE NIGER DELTA By P. Amaury Talbot
We hope that Mr. P. Amaury Talbot's notebooks are not yet exhausted, as, in spite of his compendious Peoples -of Southern Nigeria, he has gone back to still earlier days in his career on the West Coast and found a mine of unworked gold. Tribes of the Niger Delta (Sheldon Press, 18s.) can be recom- mended, not only to the ethnologist, who will find not a little That is new and much desirable confirmation of what is old, but also to the general reader of average intelligence. For it is pleasantly and unassumingly written (if one excepts the lapses into pidgin and the intrusion of European names for native Africans, which are possibly unavoidable, but jar none the less in an account of African customs). The intricate coiffures adopted (very well illustrated, as is the whole book) put our pedestrian uniformity to shame and provide inter- esting reading. Once again we find that the doctrine of re- incarnation is the safest antidote to a falling birthrate, though the treatment of twins and other abnormalities gives a push in the opposite direction. From the many African letters cited by the author we cannot refrain from quoting k callous message directed to a brother-in-law : " Thanks for wife sent. I hate her and shall return her soon." What would Mr. Justice McCardie say to that ?
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