ny, the homestead law, the
elective franchise, slavery in California, and freedom papers.
Although intended as a continuous sketch, however, this portion of the
work, like most of it, is a mixture of narratives and documents.

In the second part of the book giving biographical sketches there is a
chapter on the first Negro settlers on the Pacific coast, a pioneer
list and the Forty-Niners of color engaged in mining. Into this are
worked all sorts of personal narratives without any organizing or
unifying scheme as to place or achievement. Not much attention is paid
to proportion. The author seemingly wrote all she had heard or
collected in each case regardless of the worth of these personal
achievements.

The same style holds in the treatment of the present-day Negro of
California. There is something about almost everything. The Negro
churches and the Negro in education, law and music have considerable
space. The author next takes up distinguished women of color, doctors,
dentists, literary persons, Negroes at the Panama Pacific
International Exposition, and Negroes in the army. Then follow the
notes on the text which, instead of being given throughout the work as
footnotes are placed at the end of the work.

Judged from the point of view of the scientific investigator, the work
is neither a popular nor a documented account. When one considers the
numerous valuable facts in the book, however, he must regret that the
author did not write the work under the direction of some one well
grounded in English composition. As it is, it is so much of a
hodge-podge that one is inclined to weep like the minister who felt
that his congregation consisted of too many to be lost but not enough
to be saved.

* * * * *

_A History of South Africa._ By DOROTHEA FAIRBRIDGE, Oxford
University Press, London, 1918. Pp. 319.

One hears much nowadays about the history of South Africa and the
development of that recently enlarged domain under the direction of
Great Britain adds further interest to the story. The present volume
differs, however, from the type of most recent accounts of South
Africa in that it is a small illustrated work within the reach of
those too busy or not sufficiently well grounded in the social
sciences to read an intensively scientific treatise. As such, it has a
place in the current historical volumes growing out of the
reconstruction of the countries revolutionized by the