Captain Beatty, just before leaving for the Dardanelles, asked me to write a preface. I think that the best preface will be to answer, as far as I am able, several questions which were frequently put to me on my return to civilization after the conclusion of the Special Commission Court. These questions were, "What was the object of the Human Leopard Society? Were its members cannibals for the purpose of satisfying an appetite for human flesh, or was it some religious rite? Would the sentences inflicted by the Special Commission Court have the effect of stamping out the horrible practice?" The first question can be answered with some confidence. The trend of the whole evidence showed that the prime object of the Human Leopard Society was to secure human fat wherewith to anoint the Borfima. The witnesses told us how the occasion of a murder is used to "blood" the Borfima, but the potency of this terrible fetish depends upon its being frequently supplied with human fat. Hence these murders. The question as to cannibalism it is not possible to answer with any degree of certainty. The Commission sat for over five months, had before it vihundreds of witnesses, and the notes of evidence ran into thousands of pages; but the Court was a judicial tribunal, and it was anxious to bring its labours to an end as speedily as possible, so that no question was asked or allowed by the Court which was not relevant to the issue. Again and again answers given by witnesses opened up avenues which it would have been most interesting to investigate, but, unless the investigation was relevant to the case in hand or would have served to elucidate some other part of the evidence which was doubtful, the Court could not allow it to be pursued. Nor would it have been seemly for the members of the Court to make private investigation into a matter before them judicially.

This little book puts the pleasure of tracing one's ancestry within reach of those who have had no previous practice. It covers every phase of the subject—the sources of information, the methods of research, the compiling, the printing, and the publishing of a genealogy. Strong emphasis is laid upon the importance of employing the historical method, without which no genealogical work can become authoritative. If we may judge from most of the family histories in print, a vigorous protest against pernicious methods should be lodged with professional genealogists as well as with amateurs. Special attention is also called to the radically different plans for genealogical works, one tracing the many descendants of a common ancestor, the other tracing the many ancestors of a common descendant. There is a general drift toward the latter, many having discovered the fascination of exploring their direct lines of descent who would not care to trace the collateral branches of a family "tribe." But a detailed plan of work devoted to the exhibit of the many lines of one's own ancestry is here formulated for the first time. This "Grafton Plan," as we have called it,—already carried into execution, and approved by experience,—will appeal to thousands for whom "tribal" genealogies have little interest. Our little volume also offers something more than a mere theory of how to proceed in genealogical work. It tells of labor-saving notebooks devised for each kind of genealogy, and explains ways in which our own genealogical department is placed at the service of the reader. Frank Allaben.