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has existed between the " Assumptio Mosis " preserved in a frag mentary form and a similar set of legends about the death of Moses in the Hebrew literature, notably in the final chapters of Deuteronomy Rabba. I have published in an English translation probably the oldest of these versions in my Chronicles of Jerahmeel, chaps, l.-li. (pp. 133-146), indicating (pp. xci.-xcii.), the references to the whole literature, both Christian and Muhammedan. This book is unknown to Dr. Rosenfeld. I have, moreover, pointed out there that the passages which occur in the text of Deuteronomy Rabba, by which Zunz and also our author intended to prove the more recent origin of this version, are missing in the old MSS. of Jerahmeel. It has influenced the liturgical poetry, and is an inter- esting chapter in the history of the old religious popular literature. It would have been better had the author consulted also MSS. and not limited himself exclusively to printed texts, and also if he had rendered the version of the Yalqut more correctly ; for he omits one very curious passage about the wish of Moses to live at least with one eye open and one eye closed !
For completeness' sake I add here an unknown Roumanian fragment, taken from one of my MS. Roumanian Hronographs, the source of which is undoubtedly Greek, but which I have not been able to trace. It is not found among the quotations col- lected by Charles. It runs as follows : " When Moses died, Satan attempted to enter the body of Moses in order to deceive the Jews and to make them believe that Moses had come to life again ; but God sent the Archangel Michael, and he drove him away by the power of his holy might, and he could thus not achieve anything." To this then refers the rebuke of Satan men- tioned in the Epistle.
M. Gaster.
Die Krankheit im Volksglauben des Simmenthals. Ein Beitrag zur Ethnographie des Berner Oberlandes. Von Dr. Hans Zahler. Bern : Hallersche Buchdruckerei. 1898. (Arbeiten aus dem Geographischem Institut der Uni- versitat Bern. Heft IV.)
This monograph is one of a class which we would fain see more numerous. Dr. Zahler writes of his own native district, and there-
