Abstract
THERE have been very few books like the two volumes before us published about any people of arrested development, even in Germany, where, before the war, a certain standard of perfection was reached in ethnological treatises. It is difficult to find any fault with the work, in regard to either what has been put in or what left out. The authors are the Rev. Edwin W. Smith, an honorary chaplain to the Forces and a Church of England missionary to the Ba-ila, and Capt. Andrew Murray Dale, a magistrate in the British South Africa Company's administration. Capt. Dale died (unhappily) last year of black-water fever, worn out with much war service. The Rev. E. W. Smith, if I mistake not, saw considerable war service in Italy and elsewhere, and his work with the Forces kept this remarkable book back from publication for some little time. Incidentally, I might mention him as well known to students of Bantu. He was the author of a handbook of the Ila language, and an important contributor to the information on Southwest African languages in my “Comparative Study of the Bantu.”
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JOHNSTON, H. Negro Life in South Central Africa1. Nature 106, 410–411 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106410a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106410a0