reported cases is doubtful in consequence of authors repeating their predecessors’ tales, as Colquhoun did Marco Polo’s, and V. der Haart did Schouten’s.  I should not be at all surprised if ultimately both Polo’s and Schouten’s accounts turned out to be myths, both these travellers making their records at a time when the Old World was full of the tales of the New, so that in the end, we may yet find the custom is not, nor ever has been, so widespread as is generally supposed to have been the case.”

I do not very well see how Polo, in the 13th and 14th centuries could make his record at a time when the Old World was full of the tales of the New, discovered at the end of the 15th century!  Unless Mr. Ling Roth supposes the Venetian Traveller acquainted with the various theories of the Pre-Columbian discovery of America!!

9.—­ALACAN. (Vol. ii. pp. 255 and 261.)

Dr. G. Schlegel writes, in the T’oung Pao (May, 1898, p. 153):  “Abakan or Abachan ought to be written Alahan.  His name is written by the Chinese Ats’zehan and by the Japanese Asikan; but this is because they have both confounded the character lah with the character ts’ze; the old sound of [the last] character [of the name] was kan and is always used by the Chinese when wanting to transcribe the title Khan or Chan.  Marco Polo’s A_b_acan is a clerical error for A_l_acan.”

10.—­CHAMPA. (Vol. ii. p. 268.)

In Ma Huan’s account of the Kingdom of Siam, transl. by Mr. Phillips (Jour.  China B.R.A.S., XXI. 1886, pp. 35-36) we read:  “Their marriage ceremonies are as follows:—­They first invite the priest to conduct the bridegroom to the bride’s house, and on arrival there the priest exacts the ‘droit seigneurial,’ and then she is introduced to the bridegroom.”

11.—­RUCK QUILLS. (Vol. ii. p. 421.)

Regarding Ruck Quills, Sir H. Yule wrote in the Academy, 22nd March, 1884, pp. 204-405:—­

“I suggested that this might possibly have been some vegetable production, such as a great frond of the Ravenala (Urania speciosa) cooked to pass as a ruc’s quill. (Marco Polo, first edition, ii. 354; second edition, ii. 414.) Mr. Sibree, in his excellent book on Madagascar (The Great African Island, 1880) noticed this, but said: 

“’It is much more likely that they [the ruc’s quills] were the immensely long midribs of the leaves of the rofia palm.  These are from twenty to thirty feet long, and are not at all unlike an enormous quill stripped of the feathering portion’” (p. 55).

In another passage he describes the palm, Sagus ruffia (? raphia): 

“The rofia has a trunk of from thirty to fifty feet in height, and at the head divides into seven or eight immensely long leaves.  The midrib of these leaves is a very strong, but extremely light and straight pole....  These poles are often twenty feet or more in length, and the leaves proper consist of a great number of fine and long pinnate leaflets, set at right angles to the midrib, from eighteen to twenty inches long, and about one and a half broad,” etc. (pp. 74, 75).