genial, both men and women being exceedingly good-humoured and always ready for a joke. The thought of death is never far from them, and the fear of it is a potent factor in their lives, a fact noticeable in their songs and music. They manufacture many articles for tribal use and export; they are skilled in weaving, basketry, wood-carving and blacksmith's work. They cultivate wet rice in contrast to the system of Jhums or jungle clearing and burning practised by neighbouring tribes; they possess an elaborate system of terracing and irrigation by which they turn the steepest hill-sides into flooded rice-fields. They have fine herds of the mithan (bos frontalis), and they practise bee-keeping, hunting and the trapping of animals. They possess an elaborate system of tribal, village and family organisation, and careful rules of inheritance to land and movable property. Their villages are fortified in an elaborate way. In spite of all this advance in civilisation they practised—or perhaps even now, in spite of the contact of European officers, practise—the custom of head-hunting. This, "though associated with a vague idea of the benefits accruing from human sacrifice, must also be connected in no small degree with ordinary, everyday human vanity." Besides this, "another idea underlies head-taking, the notion that the killing of a human being is conducive to the prosperity of the community or of the crops." The next interesting question is that of the Kenna or Genua, "prohibition," the word "tabu" being avoided in describing the incidents of a magico-religious rite, because the term is without reference to the sanction on which the "prohibition" rests. This custom has been discussed by Mr. T. C. Hodson in connection with the Meitheis and Naga tribes of Manipur, but Mr. Hutton in his elaborate account of these prohibitions adds much important information.
Mr. Hutton is to be congratulated on the completion of a work of much value to anthropologists, who will look forward to his publication of another promised monograph from his hand on the Semas, the other branches of the Naga tribes.
